Today, while shopping at the mall, my friend and I briefly stopped by at the official Nokia store that opened fairly recently.

After realising that the shop sold nothing but mobile phones, we headed for the exit, when a woman started talking to me. I thought she was trying to chat me up at first when she asked “do you come here often?”, but fortunately, it turned out she was just doing some market research for Nokia.

She offered me five dollars if I’d participate in a “seven minute” survey, “Sure!”, I said.

It turns out that lying to someone taking a survey in real life is as easy as when you fill one out online. The questions were all about my perception of the brand, and whether I use my mobile phone as a “fashion accessory” - my reply to this question was essentially shooting back a scrunched up facial expression, as if to say “…really? C’mon… Really?”

I think one of the questions was like “what do you associate Nokia with?”, to which I responded “mobile phones” and “Finland”. I assume they were expecting answers like “high-disposable income, urban hipsters” or something.

“Which part of the shop did you go to today?” was a particularly obtuse question, considering it was quite a small shop. “I walked to the back of the shop… then back here to the front”. Like my other answers this was met with a neutral nod and some button pressing on the Nokia phone that was being used to record these answers.

What bugged me was that It wasn’t a very well designed survey - as time wore on (into minute five or six by now), I wanted to point out that qualitative research would be much better at this sort of thing than quantitative methods. “Of the list on the card, what features did you notice on first entering the store today?” “Er…” “The glass panels? The walls that change colour? The music being played?”.

Survey over, I was handed a brand new five dollar bill. Excellent.