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February 12, 2004

ARE YOU A MAN?

Today I have been in Norwich for a meeting about a market research study I have commissioned. Basically, twenty-five people ring up a randomly selected cross-section of the general public and ask them several questions about the repair history of their cars. This then provides me with a good indication of current trends and I can advise how to act.

The cost of the study is similar to a professional footballers weekly wage and the data collection by the twenty-five is therefore vital. With this is mind, I expected to be impressed when I met them today, but I had forgotten about the fact that they are all from rural, agricultural Norwich.

They ambled into the meeting room, mud dripping from their wellies and sat down. As I glanced out the window, I expected to see rows of tractors parked up, or numbered sheep baa-ing in the car park.

I took a deep breath and introduced myself, but felt distinctly uneasy. I couldn't work out why - I'd presented to far more senior people the previous day so this should have been a push-over, but I couldn't settle my nerves. There was something not quite right but I just couldn't put my finger on it.

And then it dawned on me - although there were fifty piercing eyes all trained on me, assessing my every move, there were only twenty-five eyebrows.

After they had been given their brief, they went off to do some pilot phone interviews with the public and I listened in from a back room to see where there was room for improvement. There were questions on car repair history, but also on demographics and personal information so we had a wide range of data for analysis.

I can understand people not reading the questions word for word, or perhaps prompting an answer when not supposed to, but question of the day absolutely HAS to be:

"are you male, sir?"

Posted by jonola14 at February 12, 2004 11:54 PM