Focus testing food - Oh Woe is Walgreen's

In the course of my checkered, so-called career I have worked for several consulting firms of various sizes and persuasions where I participated in all sorts of surveys and focus testing of products, ad campaigns and the like.

With the single exception of a stint at the American Medical Association, where the surveys seemed to be designed, tested and executed with real rigor, these have always seemed to me virtually pointless exercises, made still more pointless by incredibly sloppy design and execution ignoring even the most elementary care to avoid influencing people's responses.

Last week I participated a taste-test/survey for Walgreens. Apparently they are preparing to throw the prepared food gauntlet down and challenge White Hen (an assualt on Olympus itself!) for muffin and plastic-wrapped sandwich supremacy.

I met a friendly young lady at a Loop Walgreen's and she presented me with Walgreen's products to try vs. White Hen and sometimes other similar competitve offerings.

In every case, the whole set-up seemed designed to produce a hopelessly corrupted response.

1. All the products were identified up front. So, had I any conscious or sub-conscious bias for or against either brand, I couldn't help but be influenced.

2. Being a nice enough guy, I have a hard time telling anyone that something really stinks. (e.g. the waiter who asks if things are OK, when they are actually quite hopeless, the friend who wrote a novel, etc.)

The woman (or her script) did absolutely nothing to distance her from Walgreen's to help encourage my forthrightness. Not only did the test take place inside a Walgreen's, she didn't even do the usual spiel about working for an independent firm and having no personal interest except to get my honest opinion, etc. For all I know she DID work for Walgreen's and her job was on the line. In any event, I couldn't bring myself to tell her that the muffin was an absolutely ghastly product - whether "baked fresh daily" or annually, and I would not put it in my mouth again at any price.

3. At the end of each chapter of our encounter she would ask if the Walgreen's offering was "consistent in quality with my expectations of Walgreen's." Never did she seek to establish what my "expectation" of quality from Walgreen's might be. I could only say, yes indeed, this awful thing before me is entirely consistent with what I would expect to find at a Walgreens.

At last, to my question: I believe that several mods and regulars here have a deeper professional background in this sort of thing that mine. So, is it possible that Walgreen's will get useful, objective data from this exercise? I can't see how. Am I crazy?

Probably it's just being done to validate what they already think. Possibly it's not a taste test at all, just a way to get people to sample stuff. In any case, serious tests are normally done with far more rigor, which is not to say that they still aren't distorted in the minds of those using them to say what they want to hear.

Research proves research works!