Research Tips
Screening Out Marketing People
In research such as telephone surveys in particular, it’s common for an interviewer to begin by asking whether the interviewee works in marketing, marketing research, advertising, etc. and then terminate the interview if they say yes. Despite its pervasiveness, this is generally bad research practice. Reasons given for its use include:
- The idea that those who work in these fields will not respond “normally” because they understand the reasons behind the questions and / or they will attempt to manipulate the results in some way.
- Preventing competitors from gaining access to commercially sensitive information about either the research methods being used or the topic being researched.
The first reason is problematic because people who work in marketing jobs also buy from many companies other than their own. Their buying decisions may be informed by their knowledge of marketing practices, yet to exclude them from research is to exclude part of the target market for most products. Also, asking a screening question is unlikely to eliminate those who really do want to attempt to manipulate results, as people who would be comfortable doing that are probably equally comfortable giving a less than truthful answer to the screening question.
The second reason might be justified when either the research methods or the topic being researched are truly novel, but few things are so novel and those that are can often be better protected using copyrights, patents, and other forms of intellectual property protection. And if either the research methods or the topic are truly novel, just eliminating marketing people from the pool of research participants is unlikely to prevent people from talking about it or those same marketing people from hearing about it. Those who do participate are likely to talk to friends and family about it (some of whom may be marketing people), and people who work in the media are generally not screened out, in spite of the fact that their jobs involve dissemination of new information.