Who has the bigger one? You or me?

Welcome to the bad bad world of marketing surveys and questionnaires. We have a marketing project due in the next couple of days and all of us need to do a customer survey as part of the project. The aim is to suggest marketing strategies for MNCs and multi crore Indian companies based on a mean and skewed sample of 60 odd customers. Now that is not really easy if one makes a small and answerable questionnaire. So people end up making bigger and bigger questionnaires disillutioned by misplaced hopes on unlocking the Indian consumer. Now the question is ….

Who has the bigger one? You or me?

As obscene as it may sound, I will tell you what, these questionnaires are real PITA. Barring a couple of no brainers like age, income group, name and sometimes sex all other questions try to test the consumer’s intricate understanding, IQ, communication skills, psychological fitness and eligibility for MBA programs. Add to this the inherent pitfalls of questionnaire methods like communication gap and language and bingo, you will have a monster of data which after analysis will tell you that,

– Customers prefer low prices or price cuts
– Customers feel that performance, service network, reliability are all included in product quality

But the most funniest part of this circus is the poor consumers getting pissed off trying to answer the questionnaires. I mean, how can any one on the earth answer a survey questions like,

– If Ponds Talcum Powder were to be a dish, which one it will be?
(a) Fried Rice (b) Biryani (c) Mom’s food (d) Mess food (e) Baigan Bartha accidentally mixed up with Mango Pie

– If <the product goes here> were to be a person what characteristics it will have, tick the 5 most appropriate ones.
(a) amoral (b) brotherly (c) calm (d) daring (e) energetic (f) funky (g) gruelling (h) heavenly (i) irritating (j) jocular (k) kind (l) lovely

– If…

OK, it doesn’t matter. The point is, even I have a questionnaire in my weaponry and you never know when I will jump up and force you to fill it in. How do feel then?
(a) Mad (b) just angry (c) you know, it doesn’t matter (d) Big deal, I can fill it (e) Oh boy, I have been waiting for this all my life

Tada! Oh, btw, you can leave the response to above question in the comments.

Hello Awesome...

My name is Chandoo. Thanks for dropping by. My mission is to make you awesome in Excel & your work. I live in Wellington, New Zealand. When I am not F9ing my formulas, I cycle, cook or play lego with my kids. Know more about me.

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