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 tells about one of his interviewers who was recently denied credit to buy a condo. It turns out that six years earlier she worked as a mystery shopper on a bank study, which involved her opening a checking account with a free safety deposit box for the first year. Upon completion of the study, the interviewer returned all the study materials and forgot about the safety deposit box. Later the bank was sold to a second bank and then to a third. Six years later, the third bank turned in a bad debt charge to the credit bureau for $165, which included an $80 charge to drill out the lock, since the key had never been turned in.
Ron Sellers of Ellison Research once worked in the research department of a nationwide bank. The people at the corporate office felt like they knew everything and that Sellers' department didn't have a clue. The bank conducted a segmentation study involving multivariate analysis, and the corporate rep, when going over the results with Sellers and his boss by phone, explained importantly, "We ran it every which way you can, and we know this is the right segmentation plan, according to the Eisenhower values." Sellers and his boss nearly broke out laughing; the corporate office had managed to give eigenvalues a presidential promotion.
Sellers also tells about working recently with a focus group facility to recruit a group of church employees. He asked them to fax him the Yellow Pages listing of churches in their city so he could see the denominational listings. They faxed the list right away - a complete list of Church's Fried Chicken restaurants.
An anonymous researcher who works for an electric utility tells about the time the utility, in preparation for deregulation, hired a consulting firm to conduct focus groups to test the "unbundling" of the electric bill. Focus group participants were given copies of the unbundled bill so they could provide their likes, dislikes, etc. Suddenly, one of the participants let loose an amused squeal. She held up the bill and explained that on the back of the bill the phrase "to report an outage" instead read "to report an outrage"!
Anthony Stanowski of the Sachs Group tells about conducting a community needs survey early in his career on consumers' health attitudes, behaviors, and risks. One of the questions involved asking female respondents if they'd been pregnant within the past five years. A 74-year-old female laughed and said that if she had been, they would have surely heard about it by now. On the news.
Bob Budlong, now of AE Clevite Engine Parts, once worked at a public relations agency. One of his clients was a large automotive supplier who developed a technologically advanced consumer product. The company announced that they'd introduce their new product in Dallas at price of $1,995. They'd done no research to determine that Dallas was the right place, and all they had in the way of research on pricing was an industry survey that reported that people thought a product of this nature would probably cost $2,000. Not that they thought it was worth that money, or that they would actually spend it - just that it would probably cost that much. The company lined up distributors in Dallas, signed insertion orders for ads in local magazines and newspapers and even bought radio time. All the while Budlong's PR firm and the ad agency were begging for research - if only to help tailor their messages. Finally, three weeks before the campaign was to break, the client announced they'd hired a research firm to conduct focus groups on the product - in Chicago. Budlong reports the company shortly was put up for sale.