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Learn From Harley Davidson
By Research Guru | October 02, 2009 at 01:08 PM EDT | No Comments

Over the years I've grown to love web surveys.  And, I also love Harley Davidson as a brand, marketer and because their product has made friends smile together.  It's interesting because Harley owners are independent, rebel types who just happen to get together in packs and all wear the same black clothes with leather. I was generalizing, and yes, I saw your girlfriend's pink helmet.

We've been at web surveys a long time, but not over 100 years, like H.D. I started doing surveys via the internet before there was a "web survey" in the 1990s.  We used to do "email surveys."  Respondents put their answers between brackets {} so that you could automatically read in answers.  Sometimes the answers were good with an IT audience, for example.  Other times, the answers were not so good -  "What's a bracket and how'd you get my email address?" Early on, web surveys were so novel, you didn’t need an incentive.

Web surveys are fast, efficient and can give you feedback in 24 hours.  You can buy sample from several locations with millions of respondents.  But in many cases, that's part of the problem!  Make sure you learn from Harley Davidson because you can make errors faster than a Hell's Angel on dessert highway (rumor has it, state troopers often don't even try to stop them for safety reasons).

Harley was doing a web survey and then they learned that some of the behaviors were a little off. They had put out a good incentive so that they could get the Wall Street Harley Riders and other people to participate.  Nothing is quite like Harley loyalty, so it is not difficult to get people to do surveys for Harley Davidson.

But the interesting thing is that some of the participants in the survey were, well, in jail.  They had limited access to the internet, but long enough for someone to take a shot at a good incentive, right?  You have a long survey that takes a lot of time. No problem here.  And guess what, there are some prisons who have kept "bikers" behaving by allowing them to actually ride a Harley in "the yard" after good behavior.  So that screener about "do you ride a Harley" would not eliminate some inmates.  Think about it.  Who is really doing your web survey?  Where did you really get the sample? Do you know?

 

 

 

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