The Problem With Surveys

    • 994 posts
    October 3, 2011 10:21 AM PDT

    From this morning's RadioINK/Roy Williams webinar...

    Loved Eric Rhoads' story from his Salt Lake City radio days, illustrating one of the problems with in-store surveys and the fallibility of human perception.

    A department store client Eric wanted to get on the air was fond of doing his own in-store surveys, to determine what stations his customers favored.  The client believed his surveys to be accurate and dependable.

    Eric proposed a test: he asked for a specific item, a Valentine's Day sweater special, which he would advertise on his station (free of charge for the experiment), with the provision that it would not be advertised elsewhere.  Eric ran the schedule, the store sold sweaters and polled customers on where they'd heard about the offer.  ERIC'S STATION DIDN'T SHOW UP ON THE STORE'S SURVEY, EVEN THOUGH IT WAS THE ONLY PLACE THE SWEATERS WERE ADVERTISED!

     

    • 11 posts
    October 11, 2011 4:46 AM PDT
    That is a very interesting experiment. I always wanted to do something like that in my work, but never had the guts. Is there any explanation for that? Listeners do not remember the station, but remember the ads?