Cellphone Survey

Survey research abuse has been going on for a while. The MRA even offers definitions for SUGGING & FRUGGING (selling or fundraising under the guide of research). I've heard MUGGING for Marketing posing as survey questionnaires.

As we start thinking more about mobile market research, are we going to have to coin TUGGING for shady text messages? I couldn’t possibly keep a straight face.

Whatever it's called, every time the brightest minds in survey research find a new way to conduct timely market feedback (and yes, in this case I mean mobile phone surveys), mass marketers seem to find a way to blur the lines in the consumer’s mind between marketing and legitimate survey research.

As if researchers didn’t have enough to worry about with the number of cell-only households skyrocketing.

Consumer groups are already reacting to so-called “premium” text messages. Why the outrage? To borrow a paragraph directly from this news article:

Customers complained that they were charged $16 to $35 a month — up to $200 to $300 in total — for premium text messages even though they:
• Don't remember signing up for them or
• Weren't clearly told they would cost them a certain amount per message — typically $2, but ranging from 50 cents to $5 or
• Were unable to stop the messages from being sent to them.

I’d be mad, too. But perhaps the worst part is how research once again is getting lumped in with other marketing - “Such messages usually include quizzes, surveys, contests, jokes, horoscopes, sports scores and other content…”

Does it bother anyone else that we’re being lumped in with jokes and horoscopes?

On the flip side of the consumer abuse story, the Canadian National Do Not Call list (which excludes marketing research among some other organizations), seems to be working.

Clearly, the implication for researchers is to continue holding ourselves to the highest standards when we conduct survey research, especially as we move in to using more mobile survey software. For now that probably means only contacting people who have opted-in, and even more importantly, making it easy for them to opt out.