[Noisebridge-discuss] Grad student survey request

Josh Berkus josh at agliodbs.com
Thu Jul 8 21:40:39 UTC 2010


On 7/8/10 11:54 AM, Kyla Wagman wrote:
> Thanks for your keen eye, Don.  As you can see, I am not a pro at this. 
> I am doing this research for a student project for my consumer culture
> class.

You can get to grad school without taking a 'how to write surveys'
class? Huh.  I had to take one, and I was an art major ...

Anyway, this looks an awful lot like a marketing survey, and not at all
like a survey on culture of any sort.  If you didn't have the vcu.edu
address, I'd suspect you of being a marketeer in disguise.  Clearly
"consumer culture" is slang for "sales research".

A survey actually on "culture" would discuss what kinds of tools we buy
as opposed to make, how we buy them, what decision making process goes
into choosing a vendor, etc.  What would be interesting to study at NB
instead of "do you like Fry's" is, for example, how the "group
purchases" of things like shapelock work or don't work, and how much
economic activity they actually represent, and whether a vendor could
change their relationship with customers by facilitating such purchases.

Alternately, you could study what makes someone choose to build a piece
of electronics they could buy for less than $40.

I'm not just giving you a hard time.  My response, and other people's
responses, are intended to show you that you've misunderstood the
*nature* of your research target.  This is a very valuable thing to
learn in marketing; some of the most catastrophic commercial decisions
by companies have come about because companies assumed things about
their customers or the public which simply weren't true (New Coke,
anyone?  Segway?  Magazines on CD?  Ishtar?).  A lot of those mistaken
assumptions are based on asking the wrong questions and believing you
understood the answers.

-- 
                                  -- Josh Berkus




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