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.
Jim Nelems of the Marketing Workshop reports his firm was conducting a shopper study, talking to customers who had just left a consumer electronics store. The interviewer completed a brief interview with one man, a hurried-looking shopper, who then got into his nearby car and left. Seconds later the store manager rushed out, shouting, "That person you were talking to, he’s a shoplifter!"
Turns out the shopper gave his correct name and phone number during the interview and was soon arrested.
That was one interview which validated!
The owner of several focus facilities, requesting anonymity, reports she’d recently opened a beautiful brand new facility. The day it opened, a regular client sent over a huge flower arrangement, which the service proudly displayed. The next day, the owner noticed the flowers were drooping and dying, and decided to toss them out. But as soon as she removed the flowers from the vase, thousands of gnats flew out.
At that evening’s focus sessions, respondents were very animated. Not because of the test product but because of the hordes of gnats swarming around them.
Ron Sellers of Elfison Research tells about when he served as a project director at a research company. He was monitoring a telephone interview and all went well until they got to the demogaphics. The respondent described his marital status as single, then his occupation as "project director for a marketing research company." There was no industry screen on the questionnaire so that wasn’t a problem. But Sellers’ eyebrows shot up when the respondent indicated his annual household income was $100,000 or more.
Sellers says his boss heard about that one at salary review time.
Gerald Linda of Gerald Linda & Associates cites in-depth interviews on the subject of men’s underwear being conducted among women. (Linda says that most men’s underwear is actually purchased by women.) One respondent was terrific in describing the criteria of good fit - snugness, ease of movement, support, and so on. When asked how her husband was able to tell her all of this, she replied that she wore the undergarments herself.
Guess we know who wears the pants in that family.
Moderator Saul Cohen of Saul Cohen & Associates reports that just prior to a focus goup session with a new client not versed in market research he was going over the screener when she exclaimed, "I can’t walt to see this focus goup." When Cohen asked why, she pointed to the bottom of the screener and said, "Record sex," except she pronounced it "Reh-cord sex."
Along similar lines, I’m sure many of you, like Bill Weylock of Weylock Associates, have seen a self-administered questionnaire, on which, when asked about sex, a consumer wrote in, "YES!"
Speaking of consumers with something on their mind, Kristen Pusch of Intertec Publishing recalls reading verbatims on a mall study of sunglasses. When one respondent was asked about the type of person who’d wear the test sunglasses, she replied, "My friend Ralph would wear these sunglasses while tiding on the orange clouds floating in my head."
On the answers of consumers like this, multimillion-dollar marketing decisions are made.
Also from the "Where do these people come from?" file, Gary White of Pacific Crest Marketing recalls a focus group he was moderating for a major food manufacturer on the subject of natural foods. One cynical man felt he was making a good point when he said, "These day’s everything’s natural. Diphtheria’s natural."