Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Do you fancy sharing your insights with Scala Inc. for USD 10? Well, that is exactly what some people were asked to do last week – although of course it’s never as simple as that!
As with nearly all of these types of ‘market research surveys’ the company behind it is never actually revealed.
Here’s the email that was sent out…
Dear Participant
Because of your experience and expertise with digital signage systems and software, you have been selected to participate in this new survey. Your input is appreciated.
REDACTED
The purpose of the survey is to better understand what you are looking for from the software you would use to manage a digital signage system. The information you provide will help improve the product and services that are offered to you. As a thank you for your time and participation we will send you US$10. This survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete.
Because the number of industry professionals being contacted is small, your assistance is vital to achieve meaningful results. Please be assured that we treat any information you provide as STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL, used only in combination with answers from other respondents. To begin the survey, please click on the following URL address or copy and paste the address into your Internet browser:
REDACTED
If you experience any difficulty accessing the survey or have any questions, please contact Julie at Julie@beacontech.com.
So let’s dissect this then…
- “Because of your experience and expertise with digital signage systems and software” – it’s a mass mail from Beacon Technology Partners and includes pretty much, all of Scala’s software competitors!
- “Please be assured that we treat any information you provide as STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL” – yep, that will be confidential of course except that everything collated goes straight to Scala
- If you have anything meaningful to say in the survey, is ten minutes of your time really worth only USD10, i.e is all of your experience boiled down worth USD60 an hour?
Beacon Technology Partners have a habit of conducting this sort of cheap survey – so whether it is them selling their services to Scala (which likely means they have sold similar surveys to others) or whether in this instance it was Scala asking Beacon Technology Partners to do the survey on their behalf we don’t know.
Checking back through our email archives we see similar requests for participation in surveys on 3rd June 2011 and emails back and forth with them more recently in March 2012.
It’s all slightly suspect at best, dishonest we feel at worse but who’s to blame we cannot say.
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