Huh? I never pay attention to you anyways. #MRX

We expect a lot from people. We ask them tell us why they like certain products, why they purchase certain products, which products they intend to purchase. We ask them whether they’d prefer blue or yellow sprinkles on their donuts, and whether they like the courier or time new roman font on the package. We expect them to pay attention to and consciously remember every minute detail of their lives.

As market researchers, the survey questions we ask, the seemingly important questions, are very important to us. But, we forget that the answers to these questions are often not available to the person we are asking. We expect people to be able to tell us what they do and don’t like about products. We expect that they will have solid opinions, either a strongly agree or a strongly disagree, and we have long discussions about whether a neutral option should be included. Because everyone has an opinion if you just make them look inside and figure it out.

But, as this video shows, what is important and noticeable to you may be completely unimportant and not worth noticing to other people. We can’t expect the average consumer to care as much as we do about the tiny things. This video is one more reminder that we need to completely rethink how we write surveys. Sure, the questions are all great and interesting and meaningful but chances are many of those questions are only interesting and meaningful to you, the researcher. Not the responder who can’t fathom why the question would be asked in the first place. It’s one more reason to take off your researcher hat once you’ve finished writing a survey, and put on your “I’m annoyed with this stupid long boring survey” hat and fix the survey you just finished writing. And it’s one more reason to make sure you consider alternate methods of accessing information. Eye tracking and neuroscience just might be the trick.

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