Market Research

Several months ago, while I was still in Montreal, I received an email informing me that I had been specially selected to participate in a Chapters customer research initiative called Voices Advisory Panel. If I agree to participate they, Chapters, would, from time to time, send me brief surveys relating to my book shopping experiences. As I am a sucker for this kind of thing I agreed to participate and filled out my first survey. Now several months and surveys later I have noticed a few problems with this incarnation of market research.

One of the first major problems is the incentive program. I guess the idea is that by offering me a chance to win a $50 gift card I will jump at the chance to answer their surveys. This certainly isn’t what hooked me (as I am only there because I like answering surveys), and I doubt that it hooked that many others. The more I think about it the more insulting it seems. For some untold number of months or years I am supposed to take time out of my day just for the chance to win a $50 gift card? It seems that a scheme that they might consider would be to give all participants a $5 credit on their account, making it likely that they will spend the free $5 along with a few more supplied by the participant. As a participant, not only would I think I was getting a good deal I would also likely buy more. On top of this, I think that such a scheme has the ability to create devoted customers as well as make money.

So once one gets past the less than inviting incentive scheme and onto the meat of the exercise they are confronted by a series of poor questions and a badly designed series of surveys. One of the main problems with the questions seems to be the biases held by the writers. Frequently it is assumed that we as participants view the services offered by the store in the same light as management. On the survey on bargain books they did not offer me a place to show my disdain for coffee table books about WWII shipwrecks, or for that matter most coffee table books available in most bargain book sections. If they don’t know that the prevalence of coffee table books is driving me away from the bargain book section and they don’t offer me a place to provide them with this information then their questions relating to signage will be somewhat of a waste, especially if they don’t make a corresponding change to the distasteful content. Assuming that their sales problem relates to signage, or marketing, rather than available materials is a great oversight. If all you have to sell are coffee table books then the size of the font on a sign is not going to make a difference when it comes to my purchasing habits.

The problem of poorly conceived and poorly written questions is compounded by the decision that they have made to not allow one to skip a question. In many cases each survey I find that I am being forced to provide an answer that does not truly, or even come close to, representing how I actually feel about the situation. Depending on the number of respondents who feel this way they may have a problem on their hand. It is quite likely that all of this is for naught. They could be collecting survey after survey of completely worthless data and then making marketing decisions based on their pre-conceived and biased notions of what it is their customers want and respond to.

Though to give the authors of the surveys credit, in many instances respondents are given the opportunity to provide opinions in prose. Unfortunately, those analyzing the data then have to deal with individuals like me who take the opportunity to vent their frustration about the absurdity of the survey instead of instead of dealing with the desired question. An additional problem with this type of question that I know I create is that I tend to provide answers that may use a broader interpretation of the question or expect a greater degree of change than they might be willing to make.

At the end of the day the real question might be why I am complaining so vigorously about something I have continued to do voluntarily for some number of months. I guess I might feel this way because I am not fundamentally opposed to market research that has the goal of providing customers with a more desirable set of commercial offerings (even if the fundamental goal of the company is to make money). If this research is conducted successfully and the results properly analyzed and effective policies are implemented then, hopefully, the range of products and services available will more closely suit my needs than range of products and services that was available before this research. In this particular case I find it frustrating to see what could be thousands of people, myself included, spending time on a project that will eventually see likely see no positive results as a result of this tremendous expenditure of time and effort.