I spent about 2.5 hours tonight in a room full of women roughly my age (I’d guess 30-45 was the range) listening to sound clips of 600 pop songs in the name of market research for a local radio station.
For my trouble, I got coffee and cookies plus $80 cash in an envelope at the end of the night.
I didn’t mind, really, because market research fascinates me and I like to see how the pros do it. If you do the math, I would guess there were between 120 and 150 people in that room, at $80 each — plus two door prizes of an extra $50 — that research cost in the neighbourhood of $10K just for the people in the room; for the hosts, the room booking, the number crunching and report at the end, I’d guess the total bill is close to double that.
I filled everything out as honestly as I could but rather than use extra time to check my answers (since it was opinion, there were no right/wrong answers), I pondered how my answers would be cross referenced to pull out patterns and build pie charts. One of the questions on the survey was to name three things that make me angry. Off the top of my head it was pretty straightforward: “lousy driving, crummy customer service and Nickelback.”
I never said I made it easy for them to crunch.
(image by the League of Women Voters of California on Flickr)
Too Fun! I’d be doing the exact same thing. Calculating the cost of market research & somehow trying to make it more fun for the people tallying results. I haven’t done one of these for years. I must have fallen off the ‘invitation list’. I wonder if it was related to my zany answers? 🙂 ~ Loralee
I answered a phone survey a couple of months ago and agreed to be contacted for follow-up — that’s how I got in. I used to write haiku on my math tests and limericks at the end of my essays for prof’s amusement too; I think ultimately I feel for the people who have to tabulate everything.