"Ve have vays of making you talk...cookies, fur exahmple..."

Given some atypical scheduled events today, I’m a little pressed for time so this will, of necessity be a relatively short post. This afternoon I’m going to be in my first focus group, which I’m terribly excited about. A certain financial institution* has been silly enough to offer me $100 cash to sit in a room with a bunch of complete strangers, eat their food and talk about how I only use their credit card to buy gas and songs off of iTunes.

The real mystery about the whole thing is how I got picked to be on the panel. Credit card companies must hate me because I’m the sort of customer they loathe. I pay off my balance every month, I don’t pay late so there are no late fees to be had, and I don’t transfer balances like a madman. At most, this financial institution makes little more than the $60 annual fee off me every year. Sure, I know that they get a certain percentage of whatever I spend from the merchants I buy from as part of their fee structure, but I’m still not a big money maker for them.

Having studied how focus groups work in business school, I’m almost more excited about the opportunity to see one in action as I am about the free food and cash. Not to mention playing the “spot the represented demographic” using the other folks in the room. It’s sooo tempting to try and twist the system, but my inner “good boy” nature will no doubt prevail in the end and I’ll play along. Unless the food sucks, in which case heaven help them, I’ll become Grrrbear the techno-phobic paranoid guy who keeps money in his mattress, refuses to pay interest, and views the financial world as a collection of ungodly usurers.

* Suffice to say there’s trouble right here in River Citi…

Comments

KC said…
Yours is the second blog I've read this morning where the blogger is going to attend a focus group. Is February national focus group or something?

Have fun. Skew the results.
Stacey Pelika said…
The social scientist in me would normally plead with you to not skew the results (a friend of mine in the department here did that once with a political phone survey, and I couldn't believe he'd mess around with what could be his own data!).

But since it's a credit-card company, I'm a little less, uh, enthusiastic about that policy. Go head and mess with them!

And on the same topic, SNL had a somewhat entertaining skit about credit-card debt last weekend, now available via Video Dog:

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/comedy/2006/02/06/debt/index.html
towwas said…
Hey, my HMO called me yesterday to ask how satisfied I was with my last visit. Which is like a survey. And I'm happy to help them improve their service...which was actually quite good, although I realized through the course of the survey that I'd really rather have a different doctor.
Annie said…
Hey funny, focus groups are in the air! I just got an invite too... Yes, I'm also the nightmare credit card customer. I get my "reward points" but never carry a balance, and mine has no annual fee. A $60 annual fee sounds kind of steep to me. Have fun skewing the results!