11.8
Believing surveys are for researching shoppers is like believing pencils are for sketching portraits

­Surveys are generally thought of as a research tool for collecting data. But the most interesting survey work I've seen uses surveys as a marketing tool for driving sales.
 

Before it was acquired by Nordstrom, the online retailer Trunk Club on its homepage asked shoppers "How do you dress for work?" and showed images of casual, business, or formal attire. Those who clicked answered questions about their wardrobe goals before sharing their height, weight, and budget.
 

Trunk Club could have recruited shoppers to a survey and, in exchange for cash, coupons, or redeemable points, asked the same set of questions. Yet every day, thousands of shoppers freely shared the size of their waists and wallets.
 

The difference between the homepage and a survey is not the end goal – both involve Trunk Club getting people they don't know to do something they aren't particularly interested in doing – but the intellectual framework. To a researcher, a survey is a scientific instrument for measuring people. To a marketer, it's a persuasion device for selling to people.
 

So why is the word "survey" associated with numeric scales and robotic questions?
 

Around the 1930s, statistics became an essential tool for analyzing data. Data pioneers including pollster George Gallup and mathematician Ronald Fisher ushered in a generation of quantitatively-trained analysts who designed and conducted surveys. Everyone you might call "creatively minded" was pushed into other domains.
 

This partitioning deprived research departments the outside-the-box thinking they needed to treat surveys as both a research and marketing tool.
 

They can be both. Around the United States, many airports have installed panels outside restrooms that prompt people to rate their experience by clicking a happy, neutral, or sad face. The panels are surveys – set up to collect data – but they also exist to broadcast the PR-friendly message (however believable) "We're trying to keep this bathroom clean.”

Only thinking about surveys as a research tool is like only thinking about a pencil as a drawing instrument for sketch artists, rather than an all-purpose tool that has enabled countless human endeavors.