On October 23, I'll be presenting a one-day version of Conducting Consumer Attitude Surveys designed for retailers and under sponsorship of University of Nevada, Reno.
Just as there are changing fashion attitudes when it comes to women's clothing, there are fashions in retail marketing research: What's hot now in some retailing marketing research salons is an attitude that you can learn loads about your target markets by watching people shopping in your store and you won't learn much at all by asking consumers about their attitudes.
The truth, though, is that it's valuable to do both the watching and the asking. Watching shoppers is the best source of information about what your current customers are doing today. Asking shoppers is at its best in helping you determine why they're doing it so you can figure out what they'll want and need next season.
In the same ways that being too obvious when watching shoppers distorts what you see, being too obvious in asking about attitudes distorts the results. People will show and tell you what they think makes them look good or what they think you want to see and hear.
At the same time, there are many differences between tracking shoppers and quizzing them. Here's the most important one: If you unobtrusively watch shoppers and end up never using the findings, you've wasted time and money. But if you ask people to do you the favor of opening up their minds to you and you fail to analyze the results, use what you discover, and then let the respondents know what you're doing differently as a result, well, it's much worse than a waste of resources and opportunities. You've irritated the attitude survey respondents, making it less likely they'll open up their minds honestly if you ask them again.
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