Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Does anybody else get these?

I got an interesting piece of mail the other day. It was addressed to The Main Grocery Shopper {well, that would be me} and the letter inside began:

Dear Shopper,

As a Nebraska resident, you play a key role in our Consumer Surveys.

Once in a while we carefully select individuals {oh, you do, huh?} in your community---those whom we feel represent the smartest, most value conscious shoppers {well, thank you}. If our hunch {hunch? Your "mass mailing" hunch?} is right, you are such a person.


I read through the enclosed survey and felt like throwing it over my head in frustration. Under the category "Grocery Products" there were listed items such as bottled water, cookies, crackers, frozen fish, frozen meat substitutes (what is that?), frozen pizza, salad dressing, whipped topping, snack bars. Beside each item there were two check boxes for me to tell how often I buy these products. Here were my choices:

3 or More Times Per Month or 1 or 2 Times Per Month.

Seriously? Who buys whipped topping every week? I buy juice once or twice a month, salad dressing a few times per year, hot dogs once in the summer, frozen fish rarely (it's expensive here in the landlocked midwest), and "frozen meat substitutes" never.

The rest of the survey was the same. Lists and lists of products I never use, such as canned soups and frozen waffles and artificial sweeteners-- all wanting to know how often per month I buy them.

Either this survey is ridiculous or I'm more out of step with modern America than I knew--which, of course, is very possible. The kicker was this question:

How often does your household do the following At Least Once A Week or Twice a Week or More Often?

~Prepare meals from scratch {uh, every day, twice a day}
~Use ready-to-serve dishes {never}
~Order in or take-out {how do you do that, anyway?}
~Eat at a restaurant {once in a while}


By the end of my perusal of the survey I came to see that if I filled out any of it, I would probably soon be inundated with magazine subscription requests, and coupons for products I never use (to encourage me to try them), and credit card offers. No thanks. I threw the thing away, in spite of the cheerful promise that I "may" receive "a chance to win thousands of dollars in cash."

Do you get consumer surveys? What do you do with them?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I actually get them a lot, fill them out when I have time. Though none as bad as that one.

I signed up for a few of those online survey panels to see if I could earn some decent pocket money.. I couldn't. But I guess I expect the mail surveys a little more because of it.

Yours sounded ridiculous though. But I have to say, watching other shoppers when I'm in the grocery store; there are a lot of carts filled with those such items. People may be more lazy and unhealthy then you'd like to expect.

(sorry for my novel-length response)