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.
An interviewer requesting anonymity, but whom we’ll call Tina, is particularly adept at interviewing young children. One of her secrets when interviewing little girls is to establish rapport by first asking the girl what her middle name is. Then, whatever name is mentioned, Tina says to the girl, "What a coincidence. That’s my middle name too!"
During recruiting for one study, after assuming 15 different middle names over a two-day period, she asked a little girl what her first name was. The girl responded, "Tina."
"What a coincidence. That’s my name too!" said Tina the interviewer. To which Tina the respondent said, "You’re just saying that so I’ll talk to you!"
Tradeoff Marketing’s Harris Goldstein reports about a business trip to Florida. Goldstein had a wealthy cousin named Harry Chernin who lived in Chicago, but kept an apartment in Miami. When Goldstein told Chernin where he was going, his cousin volunteered his unused apartment to Goldstein and his wife for their stay. When they arrived at the apartment, they found it was decorated far more elaborately than they’d imagined.
As Goldstein’s wife discovered, even the bathroom was luxurious. After taking a look around, she called Goldstein in to marvel at its appointments. "Look!" she exclaimed. "Your cousin is so wealthy that he has personalized faucet handles. They’re embossed with his initials."
Goldstein looked at the handles. Sure enough, the one on the left was embossed with an "H" and the one on the right was embossed with a "C."
A supervisor at a mall facility, who requests anonymity, reports that one of her interviewers often talked to God. He’d look upward, focus his ear, and respond to whatever question he’d heard, muttering things like, "why should I do that?"
This interviewer, before he was let go, refused to speak with any member of the staff, except for a young, bearded male interviewer, whom he called Jesus, and the supervisor, whom he called the Virgin.
While the supervisor never detected anything wrong with this interviewer’s questionnaires, who really knows whether the opinion on some toothpaste powder was really that of a head of household who qualified for the study, or God (who did not)?
Interviewer Damien Rommal of PKM Marketing Research in the Los Angeles area reports occasionally being rebuffed by shoppers he attempts to interview in the mall. The most frequent response of this type is, "No habla Englais," provided by Hispanic consumers. But he was shocked one afternoon when a consumer he approached responded in a robot-like staccato voice, "Sorry. I am unable to conjugate the vowels necessary to compile sentences within the confines of the English language."
Jewel Alderton of Facts Consolidated tells about discussing a political study with a client. When the client suggested doing intercept interviews at high-traffic strip malls, since a visual needed to be shown, Alderton indicated that past experience with surveys using this methodology never yielded enough Republicans.
"Oh," said the client, "What can we do about that?"
"Well," Alderton said, ’"We could weight for them."
"How long do you suggest we wait?" asked the client.
Assuming that Alderton is fight, and that Republicans are underrepresented, I wonder if Republicans are less likely to stop for an interview, or less likely to shop at strip malls. Maybe Republicans all shop at upscale regional malls...