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.
In addition to preparing this column and operating my market research business, I write plays. Over the past few months I’ve had several of them performed at the theater group I belong to. As a result, I attend frequent rehearsals. This has all been a little confusing to my six-year-old stepson John, who told his mother, "When I grow up I want to be a research guy like Art and go to the theater."
This is the same John who asked me, as I was working at my desk, if he could eat something in the "vegetable group" for lunch. I mentally commended him for putting to work his first-grade lesson on nutrition and told him yes. Later, when I asked what he’d eaten, he told me, "Potato chips."
The kid obviously has some talent for market research - at least in putting together a proposal that will sell! Sometimes respondents have their own agendas. Freelance moderator Paul Schneller reports conducting a one-on-one interview with a woman on ads about nutrition. When he asked, "What did you think of the ad with the children?" his chatty live-wire replied without a beat, "It reminds me of my genetically engineered cat." Of course, the ad, consisting solely of close-ups of children’s smiling faces, had nothing in it looking like a cat or any other animal. Throughout the interview, regardless of what Schneller asked, the woman kept referring to the cat, at one point volunteering, "It’s part cat and part skunk." Finally, like a proud parent, the woman pulled out a full series of snapshots from her purse, and sure enough, the cat had a bushy black tail that stood straight up. Terrific, Schneller thought, hearing his clients roiling with laughter in back of the mirror.
Jennifer Franz of J.D. Franz Research reports conducting a focus group on customer service that had a"crazy" in it. The man, a militia member, kept making strident speeches during the session, insisting to Franz and the rest of the group that large corporations now control American society. The problem for Franz was that the guy was a pretty effective speaker. When Franz finally told him, "You are making a speech and we can’t have speeches in this group," another participant, a typical middle-of-the road citizen, piped in, "You certainly should let him make a speech if you want the truth! All you want is sound bites!"
Was this the market research revolution that Franz had heard was coming?
Donna Tinari-Siegfried of Fundamental Research reports doing a series of focus groups with children on lighted pegboard toys. The sessions were audio and videotaped, and after the first evening’s session her clients left for dinner, Siegfried planning to join them after cleaning up a few things. She went into the focus room, and to her horror, tripped over an electric cord. All of the games tumbled to the floor, with hundreds of colored pieces, arranged into intricate designs, flying from the pegboards. After saying to herself, "Holy smokes!" (okay, that’s not exactly what she said), she called the restaurant and told her client she was a bit more fatigued than she thought and would see them the next day. Siegfried spent the better part of the night putting all the colored pieces backin their spaces.
The next day’s sessions went beautifully. A day later, Siegfried received a call from her client, who’d had an opportunity to view the tapes, which unbeknownst to Siegfried, were still running when she tripped and had captured her in full clumsiness. The client was nice enough to express appreciation for all the time Siegfried had put into redoing the designs.
From then on, Siegfried made sure her video and audio tapes were shut off immediately following each session.
If any of you have stories about tapes not being shut off, send them to me!