I’m not sure if this qualifies or not. I filled out an emailed survey from Potbelly and responded yes to the “May we contact you further?” question at the end. Well, they did end up contacting me, and I ultimately wound up on a year-long (once per quarter) focus group for them. So not only did I wind up with a ton of free food at every session, I also received a $50 gift card each time. It felt like an awfully good deal to me.
Hard to call it anything else, on an individual basis.
What do you think was the net value and effect of your contributions?
Unless you do the Noodles ones. I’m not one to fill out that stuff, ever, but one time I was particularly annoyed with the service I got at Noodles so I figured I would take the survey and just use my throwaway email address. Turns out that survey at the bottom of your receipt where it says ‘tell us about your visit and get a free appetizer’ or something like that. That’s all it is. NSA. You go to their site, spend a few minutes filling out some check boxes and at the end it gives you a code. Write the code down and redeem it next time you go in. Totally anonymous (even more so if you use cash, if you’re worried about that). You never give them your name, phone number, email address etc. The only thing even close to a ‘catch’ is that the code expires in 30 days so they’re trying to get you to come back in 30 days. But it’s free so you’re really not losing anything if you don’t go back.
Some surveys are just surveys, run for the straightforward purpose, yes.
I try to make it clear that when I am talking about the practices of the large-scale manufacturers, marketers and sellers (large-chain grocers on up to Kraft Foods), it does not necessarily apply to smaller-scale, more traditional and “disciple” operations. There are very small operations that run at full data-mining scale; there are largish operations that run CS surveys in all openness and good faith.
But a vast amount of our consumer goods come from a relatively small number of national and international conglomerates, none of whom have been inclined to “play nice” with the customer since about 1948. So what I’m speaking about is widespread and significant to consumers as a whole, but by no means universal or without exceptions among smaller operations.
(A disciple, as Alan Watts once put it, is someone who got an A in the course but missed the whole point. I have seen smaller operations doing the data-mining thing simply because they found out about it and somehow must be a Best Business Practice… but they have no idea why.)
Save-A-Lot stores used to give out the occasional receipt with a number for a phone survey. After you did the survey, you got a voucher number for a free loaf of bread or a box of mac and cheese on your next visit to the store. Now they just have a website survey address with a chance of winning something.
I used to fill out the little survey cards from restaurant tables and send them in. I’d usually get a coupon in the mail for a free sandwich or something long after I’d forgotten about the card. I sent an eloquent complaint to Texas Roadhouse about how loud the music was in their restaurant, and they sent me a $30 gift card. As far as I can tell, they haven’t reduced the decibel level any.
“Send this @$$hole the bedbug letter.” 
Hard to say, since I’m only through two of the four sessions. They’ve mentioned that it can take from months to over a year from the time a proposed food item is discussed in a focus group to the time a green-lit product winds up in stores, so I haven’t seen anything I liked show up yet. But I’ve certainly felt like they’ve taken my input (and that of all the other contributors) seriously. It is nothing like the idiotic (IMHO) Chevy commercials with the “focus groups” picking out emojis to describe how they feel about the product. :rolleyes:
No, focus groups of the type you’re participating in are often quite serious.
Keep in mind, though, that there are often multiple levels to these things, and what you are told is being tested (or even what you think is being tested) may not be the real focus at all. If something seems off about the process, you’re probably right.
Because.
The granddaddy of all these consumer sessions is the Schwerin System. People were invited to watch movie clips and pilots for upcoming television shows and help rate them, suggest changes, and generally made to feel that Hollywood/TVland was really concerned about their opinions. Very serious presentation, long questionnaires, plenty of room for essay answers. There would be long discussion of people’s answers after the fact, and Q&A sessions.
But… the shows and movie clips were irrelevant junk, usually shows that had already been rejected by networks but never heard of by the general public (and if they did know a show name, it added authenticity).
The real focus, and the ratings and feedback, were on the commercials run between show segments, which viewers simply accepted as part of the presentation. (This was well before today’s alternate viewing methods and “commercial free” was almost a sense-free phrase.) There would be only a few questions about the commercials, but they’d be the gold among the sand for the presenters.
This was dinosaur-age stuff. The layers-on-layers, wheels-in-wheels and man behind the curtain have gotten incalculably more subtle. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out, for example, that the food product you’re supposedly reviewing is irrelevant and it’s really the packaging size or shape, or a food color or flavor intended for other use, or logo size and placement, or something even less obvious. Even if you spend hours talking about the product itself - it may just be window dressing for the real point of the exercise.
I find that unlikely—though admittedly not impossible—in this case. But we’re getting a bit far afield of the OP at this point, and I don’t want to hijack any further.
Your next post is your 10,000th. Live a little. 
I fill one out once a week at my grocery, as every seven days I can get fifty points good for a discount on gasoline purchases. So in a month if I fill out four I can get 20cents per gallon off on my gas. Not too bad. Entering also makes me eligible for a gift card drawing but I’ve never won one of those.