One of my earliest memories of market research was filling in numerous household surveys under strict instruction from my mum. Every few months a thick A4 brown envelope would drop through our letterbox and land neatly on our doormat, only to be scooped up excitedly by my mum who announced its arrival to the rest of the household through a series of high-pitched screeches. 
You see, in our household these surveys were somewhat a tradition: sent by market research companies to gain insight into consumer preferences, every time we received one my mum would diligently fill in the hefty document (or cajole (and train) the rest of the family to contribute under her rules) before sending it back for processing.

 The reward? A deluge of consumer products and retail vouchers feeding their way through our letterbox for months on end. From shampoos to shoe polish most days we would receive something glistening and exciting on our doormat. Except, it wasn't that exciting: often the products we received were samples for a new consumer product which our family had absolutely no interest in, or would never, ever use. We often spent time giving away these sample products to homes where they would be wanted, or more often to charity shops. And the more surveys we completed, the more received. We were, I'm sure, regarded by the researchers as 'elite' and 'special' form-fillers, dedicated to the pursuit of being helpful consumer citizens, and as it was the early 1990's the market research agencies didn't cross-check our growing list of previous survey responses for inaccuracies.

 Over the years my mum had perfected a finely-tuned method to maximise her chance of being sent free products (and, more importantly to her, vouchers), by answering questions in the survey in her own special way, i.e. by rating the highest possible score for each of the most expensive brands in every question (a higher priced brand, such as Persil washing powder, would be rated our ‘favourite’ and the cheapest brand would be rated low). The interesting thing about this is that as a family of 7 living on a shoestring we always, without fail, bought the cheapest brands.

 Now, I know my mum was probably a lone-ranger in her tireless pursuit to acquiring free consumer products and vouchers but often, when presented with weighty reports showing the results of quantitative consumer market research surveys I remember this sweet memory. Although large market research surveys have distinct benefits my experience with my mum always reminds me of the main mitigating factor: human behaviour.  This memory has quite possibly contributed to my absolute belief in qualitative insight-led consumer research (to get a deep understanding of not just what people say they do but also what they actually do) as a essential research component which complements large-scale quantitative market research surveys.