Help out a Forumer - 10 minute survey on media usage, $100 Amazon gift card drawing!

PlushyCthulhu

(posted with mod approval, thanks ceres!)

Hi guys,

I am an occasional poster here and a current grad student. For a class, my group is helping out a local company with their marketing and STP (segmentation, targeting, and positioning). As part of our research, we have created a quick survey to investigate media usage, reviews, and remembering suggestions. If you are willing to take the survey and help me out I would greatly appreciate it. We have two $100 Amazon gift cards to randomly distribute to entrants.

The data itself will only be reported in aggregate to our company, and will not be used for any other purpose. You have the option of submitting an email address so you can be contacted about the gift card, if you do that email will be used for that purpose only and then deleted. If you do not want to provide an email address, feel free to put in "PENNYARCADE:<YourUsername>" instead and I will track you down through PM if you are selected. However, you do not have to put in any identification to complete the survey.

The survey is here: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/nrw/124859

Thank you very much!

To give this thread some legs, what pain points do you see in your media usage? Specifically, who/what do you rely on to discover new offerings, and how do you remember suggestions for later?

Red Raevyn

I rely heavily on the recommendations of people I know. The biggest pain point (if I interpret the term correctly) for me is that I no longer trust any professional reviews of video games at all, and watch them only for entertainment value or the purely quantitative information within.

bowen

I'm very distrustful of reviews, in fact, I look at the negatives to gauge whether I should do something or not. Rather than the positives, which are often paid to be advertised.

Cynic Jester

I rely on my memory to remember suggestions. If I see a movie trailer, and it impresses me, chances are I'll remember it at a later time. If a friend I trust raves about this new game that does so and so and is the best thing since sliced bread, chances are that'll pop into my head when I'm browsing for a new game.

As to who I rely on for discovering new offerings, it's friends and forums, specifically this one and SomethingAwful. To a lesser degree, RockPaperShotgun, but I'd still check the forum thread to see what the groupthink on it is.

Iruka

When Buying products I always look at reviews, particularly on amazon and newegg, fishing out all the negative comments and weighing the risks.

I am personally much less inclined to read reviews on books, music, or movies with any sort of seriousness, even from friends and family. Video games, however, I like to get a good sense of whats happing before I toss down 50 bucks, but I do alot of that by word of mouth, demos, and podcasts.

I would like to be able to organize things by mood/life situations rather than the definitions of the media themselves. Like, this book and this game and going to this gallery will speak to my interest in military paraphernalia. Or this techno workout music and this cook book and this life style blog and this wii fit go into healthy lifestyle. Right now I get a lot of recommendations filtered by what they are, but a lot of times my music and my amazon cart and my games choices are somewhat related.

ArbitraryDescriptor

bowen wrote: »

I'm very distrustful of reviews, in fact, I look at the negatives to gauge whether I should do something or not. Rather than the positives, which are often paid to be advertised.

I do this too, but I feel like I'm just as vulnerable to shills

1 Star

I'd give 0 stars if I could. First TV was scratched and VENDOR.com took 3 weeks to even respond. 6 weeks later I finally had a functioning TV, and it's fine, but VENDOR.com customer service sucks.

If the bulk of the negative reviews were like that, I'd take it as a sign that the product was ultimately solid; and I'd probably buy that TV (if it was cheaper than elsewhere).

Generally though: if I can't find an honest negative review detailing an actual product fault, I won't buy it. Everything has faults, even if it is only due to the reviewer having unreasonable expectations. A list of reviews that doesn't include one is an incomplete dataset.

bowen

I agree with you AD. If it's something like "product is made of cheap plastic" or "the box the DVD is gets glue all over the disc so that it gets scratched" then those are good reviews. If it's "product is great, but dealing with shitizon sucks!" then I tend to ignore it and look elsewhere.

The reviews "A+++!!!++++!!! would buy again" are ultimately unhelpful.

Jimmy King

I also read the reviews on amazon and the like pretty frequently, and like others here, I primarily look at the negative reviews. For good reviews, I mostly just make sure that there are some and will glance over them to see if the people say anything particularly helpful. Mostly I'm looking at the negative reviews to see what people disliked, though. Is the product cheap crap that falls apart? Is the video game frustrating in some way that is likely to cause me to not enjoy it? Or are these people with negative reviews just whiny morons?

While I'm happy to find stuff that is particularly good, I've generally got what I think are pretty reasonable expectations and am just making sure something isn't likely to be significantly crappier than I expect.

I use a combination of memory, text files with lists, and online wish lists to remember what I want. Most stuff that I really, really, want I'll remember. Stuff I just probably want but am not sure of because more info is needed or I know it's probably just ok and so it's not at the top of my list needs to go into a list somewhere or I'll forget.

Project Mayhem

This may seem obvious, but I'd like to chime in and say that the price of the product influences how dig I deep for reviews, etc. If it's a $1 app, I'm probably going to get it without reading reviews if a friend recommends it. I just bought an expensive set of studio monitors, and spent hours listening to different sets, reading reviews, etc. before making that purchase.

NightDragon

Project Mayhem wrote: »

This may seem obvious, but I'd like to chime in and say that the price of the product influences how dig I deep for reviews, etc. If it's a $1 app, I'm probably going to get it without reading reviews if a friend recommends it. I just bought an expensive set of studio monitors, and spent hours listening to different sets, reading reviews, etc. before making that purchase.

Agree'd with this. The more expensive something is, the more reviews I will read through before making my final decision and purchase.

Elin

I find most of my new media by browsing online, and if I want to remember it I bookmark it.

PlushyCthulhu

Elin wrote: »

I find most of my new media by browsing online, and if I want to remember it I bookmark it.

How long does stuff live as a bookmark? Do you have old stuff from a year ago that you haven't acted on?

Thanks for the responses guys, this is great stuff. FYI we got a good response, so we will probably be closing the survey at midnight PST on Wednesday.

Elin

PlushyCthulhu wrote: »

Elin wrote: »

I find most of my new media by browsing online, and if I want to remember it I bookmark it.

How long does stuff live as a bookmark? Do you have old stuff from a year ago that you haven't acted on?

Thanks for the responses guys, this is great stuff. FYI we got a good response, so we will probably be closing the survey at midnight PST on Wednesday.

I do have bookmarks that old and older. Every now and again I'll clean it out, but in general I'll keep my bookmarks. I have xmarks with FireFox so I have those bookmarks on all my computers. I also make bookmarks on my phone browser.

Zombie Hero

Just completed it.

Depending on the target population, you may have some sampling bias, as the PA posters don't represent the general population (especially on topics such as checking the internet and video games). I'm pretty sure you are getting participants from elsewhere too, i just thought I would mention it just in case. This also fringes on a volunteer sample; people who respond are also more likely to share their ideas over social networks.

Edit: I would also like to add that i look at reviews more closely the less i know about the product. For example, i bought a hotpot cooker for christmas for someone and didn't know the first thing about them, so i relied exclusively on amazon reviews. For video games, i rarely read them because i know about them before i even look to purchase them.

Tomanta

For product selection, it depends. Advertising can get me interested, but I like to get a feel for word of mouth to see if I'm interested. Mainstream movies, for example, I'll head over to Rotten Tomatoes and check out the aggregate score/summary over any particular review, and probably read one or two. For books I'll see what Amazon users have to say. For video games I'll usually check the Gametrailers review to get a feel for the game, but usually ignore the "review" in favor of "it has these features, these bugs."

For stuff that is not heavily advertised or something I'm going to know about quickly anyway, I look towards social sites, primarily these forums since most of my facebook friends don't share my interests. I also look at recommendations from Netflix and Amazon. If I find something in a store that looks interesting, I'll use my phone to see what Amazon has to say (yay for the barcode scanner!).

User reviews are mostly awful, but once you realize that you can pick out the useful ones. If something on Amazon has 400 4-5 star reviews and, say, 10 one star reviews I'll look at the 1-stars just for a differing opinion, I'll also check out the comments to the reviews. If I spot a 4/5-star review that is both lengthy and marked as helpful I'll read it to get a better idea on the content.

As for keeping track, I'll either remember it (more likely to purchase that way) or add it to my Amazon wishlist or my phone's notepad if I want to do more research.

I find it hard to find new music, but that is mostly because of my own habits. Pandora/Last.fm are great for that but I don't find myself listening to music much outside of my car.

EDIT: I have stuff in my Amazon wishlist that I added years ago. I'll review it and clean it up occasionally.

Forar

Tomanta wrote: »

EDIT: I have stuff in my Amazon wishlist that I added years ago. I'll review it and clean it up occasionally.

The oldest thing on my Amazon wishlist is over 2 years old, though most of the old stuff are novels I haven't gotten around to, trade paperbacks I have yet to track down previous parts of and a few dvds that I just haven't really had the time or inclination to snag as I try to pay off my credit card.

Sometimes I realize I don't really want something all that badly and delete it, sometimes I impulse buy a few things, and sometimes they sit languishing for weeks, months or years.

For example, I'll probably put in an Amazon order in the coming weeks, once my tax return, benefits payment and a 'non-rent' paycheque come through, but even then (and having discussed this) I may prioritize newer things over stuff I've been waiting ages on (a dvd I'd like to show the woman I'm dating or a more recent book in a series I've picked up over the last year, etc).

Tomanta

My Amazon wishlist is mostly used to fill the gap in free shipping. I'll impulse buy something, then find something on my wishlist as an add-on. A lot of stuff on there is "Eh, might be neat. I'll think about it" and a little "I really want this... but not at this price at this time."