Editor’s note: "War Stories" is a regular feature in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous stories of life in the research trenches.
Gail Fleenor tells about recently conducting an in-store customer survey using personnel from a temporary agency. The first temp to arrive for training walked past the door of the room several times before entering. When he worked up his nerve to enter the room, he took his seat without looking right or left. Fleenor asked his name and attempted to engage this terribly shy person in a little conversation to make him feel more at ease. However, he remained uncomfortable.
His shyness was painful to watch throughout training and during the practice session he was asked by each participant to repeat his answers because of his extreme soft-spokenness. In fact he barely moved his lips when speaking! Fleenor was sure the young man would be afraid to approach customers for interviews but, since she was short on personnel, she decided to give it a try.
The shy young man actually did an adequate job interviewing customers. He did not hesitate to approach them but made no small talk and did not smile. His only comment about the survey: "All the people I’ve interviewed seem to have hearing problems."
Fleenor also tells about conducting in-store surveys in two small towns and receiving two types of refusals she’d never received before. One man refused to be interviewed because he was purchasing beer and was sure that somehow through the survey (which of course was anonymous) his pastor would find out that he drank.
Another gentleman purchasing beer refused to be interviewed because he didn’t want his wife to know he was buying beer again.
When Terry Thompson of Thompson Information Services was with a major research supplier, he conducted an annual awareness and satisfaction tracking study among cotton growers for a major ag-chem company. After his annual client presentation, the client routinely compared survey results, by region, with actual sales changes, and occasionally asked Thompson to discuss discrepancies.
Most years, comparisons were close to survey expectations. But once, one region showed big sale increases while the survey data would have predicted a sales decline. When challenged, Thompson had no clue. Fortunately, the regional sales manager was in attendance at the presentation. He explained that marijuana growers in the area had learned that the client’s product worked as well on marijuana as on cotton. And since Thompson only surveyed the targeted cotton growers, his survey missed the marijuana growers responsible for much of the regional market growth.
Cher Hoffman of The Horace Mann Companies tells about conducting a focus goup of existing customers. A new mother arrived with her four-weekold infant. The subject matter to be covered did not involve baby products. The goup was intentionally recruited to be quite small, only six respondents, and Hoffman didn’t want to offend a customer. So, she decided to see how things would go with the infant.
Shortly after the group began, the baby started to cry. The mother immediately began breast feeding. That was distracting, but only for a moment. The other respondents were quick to get back into the subject matter.
But, then the mother decided she wanted more food from the refreshment table. She then handed the child to the respondent sitting next to her. When the baby began to cry again, and the respondent holding the baby obviously wasn’t prepared to continue with the breast feeding, Hoffman said to the mother, "You know, your baby isn’t very happy here, and she is far more important than this group, so why don’t you go ahead and take her home. Here’s your $50 for your time."
But the woman refused to leave. She said she was enjoying the goup and the food too much to leave. So, she took the child from the other respondent and continued to feed the child. The child quieted and the group resumed. When the goup ended, the mother returned to the food table for more food - several times, in fact.