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The big market research (MR) problem: people, when asked, often tell you what they think you want to hear rather than what they really think. For way too long, conventional Market Research (MR) wisdom has harked back to the days of venerable old George Gallup to make the point that it is not the 'size' of a sample that counts in any opinion poll, but how 'representative' it is. If you ask a cross-section of a population what it thinks, they sagely say, you'll hear what the population thinks. Time to kick oneself hard. If you're a marketer who can't lift a finger without MR backing, kick yourself twice as hard. Because there's something else that the MR men and women avoid talking about: it is but a tool offering a glimpse of reality, not reality itself, and is as fallible as any other tool devised by men and women. So-what are the flaws that end up distorting MR's picture of reality? Sampling is still far from perfect, according to the self-analysis of MR firms such as AC Nielsen India, part of the same group as India's premier MR firm ORG-MARG. In other words, in a country as diverse as India, arriving at a truly representative sample remains a hit-or-miss challenge. Typically, representation is done by slotting prospects (for inclusion in the sample) into discrete categories, and then balancing them out by some formula for the entire target group whose opinion is sought (say, the Indian electorate). In the actual heat of the sampling moment, some categories can get over-sampled and some under-sampled---distorting the end result. That is what appears to have happened with most of the exit polls just conducted after India's general elections, according to Partha Rakshit, managing director, AC Nielsen India. The sample, he says, ended up as a 'self-selecting' rather than random one---with greater representation given to those willing merrily to tell pollsters who they voted for. "It is possible that the sample may have been skewed to the upper/middle income groups who are more literate and more forthcoming in their response," says Rakshit. Possible, yes. What could also happen, though, is that people behave in a manner that is not typical to their category---they do not fit themselves into the 'box' that the category-by-category framework reserves for them. This breaks down the entire 'logic' of slotting people one way or another for sampling convenience. Ah, MR folk could respond, if that sort of counter-category behaviour was statistically significant (influencing outcomes in any notable way, that is), samplers would have caught it long ago. After all, MR professionals do this sort of thing day in and day out. Maybe the bigger source of error has little to do with the sampling process, and more to do with human psychology. Let's face it. People do not like strangers probing too deep into things like their sexual choices, other intimate preferences and intellectual 'life and death' decisions---especially when there's high risk of retribution in case of failure to conform with an arbitrarily authoritarian version of 'morality' (set high up the Adorno scale). What people do know---especially when media plays a big role in propagating such knowledge---are the choices that are considered okay. People, thus, sometimes end up conforming with what's 'acceptable' in public, whilst exercising their real choice only in secret. "Voter inhibition or what we refer to as the 'fear factor', especially when there are wildly publicised incidents of violence, can precipitate this," says Rakshit. It isn't entirely uncommon behaviour, once you think about it. When asked, people sometimes tell you what they think you want to hear, not what they really think. This in itself is something for everyone who values an open society, free choice and truth, to think long and hard about.
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