Our human nature has traditionally been characterized by a willingness among individuals to express an opinion on just about any subject known to mankind. As far back as history can relate people have eagerly rendered their viewpoints on anything and everything. Traditionally we have been taught that opinions should be taken with a grain of salt because that is all they are worth. Well, according to the economics of today, opinions are not only valuable, but they are worth money. Paid surveys have become the rage of the Internet in the first decade of the 21st Century, and people around the world are beginning to join in the frenzy.
There is not one subject in the history of mankind that has been sheltered from public opinion. The entire sports gambling industry, a twelve billion dollar annual business world wide, is built on the fact that people have diverse opinions about the outcome of sporting events. There were differences of opinion back in ancient Rome when royalty would bet on the outcome of the chariot races. Heaven forbid if it was your neck that was riding on the outcome of a wager. The entire Olympic development emerged because people from different countries had a divergence of opinion as to whose athletes were better. The fields of wrestling, bow and arrow shooting, chariot and horse racing, and a variety of other competitive events laid the foundation for wagering on these varying opinions. The differences were ultimately settled by Olympic competition. These events helped shape peoples’ opinions regarding which army was better prepared to fight, which country made the most effective warring equipment and which country constructed the sturdiest chariot. Today, by virtue of paid surveys, people are being paid for expressing their opinions.
Technological advancements have propelled certain industries to the forefront. Within those industries, there are products manufactured that sustain these businesses. Competition in the free market is what drives the price of the products. Their ultimate success or failure is determined by the amount of sales generated in relation to their competition, and for this reason paid surveys have become an invaluable marketing tool today.
Paid Surveys – Test Market for Products
Paid surveys are the test tracks for marketing firms hired to determine how the public views a particular product or concept, and whether or not the product will be ultimately successful on the open market. Paid surveys have become an important facet of the world’s economy over the past ten years. Since the utilization of the Internet as a tool in business today, the use of paid surveys has increased by leaps and bounds. Paid surveys have been around for decades, however, and many companies have used paid surveys strategies in order to make critical administrative decisions regarding the production and marketing of a particular product.
One company based in New England that employed paid surveys to make administrative determinations regarding their product is the manufacturers of what we will call X Brand Ice Cream. X Brand Ice Cream was produced by a New England company that wanted to give their ice cream a special quality. The firm understood that the ice cream industry had some major players in the 70’s, such as Sealtest, Borden, Carvel, Baskin-Robbins and the packaged brands of the big-time supermarkets, such as A&P, Key Food, Shoprite and Pathmark. The makers of X Brand hired a marketing firm to conduct paid surveys to test their product. The paid surveys were conducted initially in New England. Subsequently, there were additional paid surveys in the New York metropolitan area, paid surveys in the Washington DC area, and paid surveys in the Philadelphia-Trenton area.
Since the company’s philosophy was to produce exotic ice cream flavors, the paid surveys would be a great indicator of the preferences of the public. The initial response from the participants of the paid surveys was luke-warm at best. You must keep in mind that these paid surveys consisted of a taste test of various flavors of ice cream However, during these paid surveys, neither the name of the company, which was X Brand, nor the name of the flavor of the ice cream was disclosed to those participating in the paid surveys.
The results of the initial paid surveys were curious at first, but they taught marketing firms a crucial lesson in the value of paid surveys. The reason that the people were not that receptive to the different flavors of ice cream was because the paid surveys revealed that the participants felt that the ice cream lacked a pizzazz about it. Several months later, the same paid surveys were administered once again to the same corps of paid surveys participants. This time, the name of the brand of ice cream, X Brand (actually a European sounding name), was revealed to these paid surveys takers. The paid surveys had a completely different outcome. The participants of these paid surveys approved overwhelmingly of the different flavors of the ice cream. The reason given in these paid surveys for the change of opinion is because the paid surveys participants believed they were eating ice cream imported to the United States from Europe, presumably Holland or Switzerland.
The makers of X Brand then utilized paid surveys to determine which particular flavors they should market, and which others they should not. The cities that they chose were:
Paid Surveys – New York City, New York
Paid Surveys - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Paid Surveys – Baltimore, Maryland
Paid Surveys – Boston, Massachusetts
Paid Surveys – Portland, Maine
Paid Surveys – Providence, Rhode Island
Paid Surveys – Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Paid Surveys – Montpelier, Vermont
Paid Surveys - Concord, New Hampshire
Paid Surveys – Cape May, New Jersey
Paid Surveys – Old Greenwich, Connecticut
Paid Surveys – Dover, Delaware
The interesting findings in these paid surveys was that the more affluent the area of the paid surveys, the more favorable the results were. Additionally, the paid surveys yielded the information that the more affluent the area, the more impressed those tested were with the foreign sounding name, and the more willing they were to pay a higher price for the ice cream. The more exotic-sounding the flavor of the ice cream, the more positive was the response from the paid surveys.
These results allowed the manufacturers of the ice cream to concentrate on those areas earmarked in the paid surveys, and X Brand Ice Cream became a staple in the American culture. The same ice cream that received moderate reviews in the initial paid surveys had received a completely different opinion by the same corps of participants in subsequent paid surveys simply because the brand was given a foreign-sounding name. The people thought they were purchasing ice cream that was a better value to them than their American counterparts.
Paid surveys are now conducted today through the services of the Internet. People are in great demand to become participants in these paid surveys. If you are interested in participating in paid surveys, kindly log on to your computer and consult a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo, for the term “paid surveys
