A Survey for the Girls
Like many women, I love athleisure. With the privilege of getting to work remotely, I wear it a lot. Typically my “uniform” consists of hold-everything-in leggings paired with a sports bra and tank top. But I have a bone to pick about that sports bra.
Inside every sports bra I’ve ever worn lives a thin demonic padded insert that seemingly performs no function other than annoying its owner. Additionally, when you put your sports bra through the laundry, that insert becomes awkwardly distorted inside the bra, or it somehow comes out through the teeny slit. Personally, I no longer try to adjust and fix it. Instead, I give it to my dog to play with until it’s destroyed.
As a marketer, I can’t help but wonder what other sports bra wearers feel. If I worked at a place that made them (for example, Nike), I know I would want to find out. To do so, I could conduct a survey. Assuming I had access to a customer database, I would solicit surveys from 500 adult females who have purchased sports bras for themselves in the last year. To help prevent refusals, we would entice our sample group with a coupon upon completion.
The questions I would ask would come in a variety of forms. First, we’d start with some easy, warmup questions:
What is your age? (Slide, Metric)
What is your regular bra size? (Multiple Choice, Categorical)
What size is your sports bra? (Multiple Choice, Categorical)
Have you purchased a sports bra for yourself in the last year? (Yes/No, Categorical)
Then we would ask a few more questions that require slightly more thought:
How often do you wear sports bras? (Likert - 7 Scale)
Do you keep the padded insert (inside your sports bra), or do you remove it? (Dual Choice, Categorical).
If yes, how annoying is it to you, if at all? (Synthetic Metric - 7 Scale)
What do you think the padded insert is for? (Open-ended)
If the padded insert were sewn into the bra, making it nearly impossible for it to move around, would you prefer to keep it? (Yes/No, Categorical)
As a marketer, this information is valuable because we could save money in production costs if we determine that the insert provides no value to the intended consumer. We could also find out that consumers prefer the insert but wish it were sewn into the bra, which would provide an opportunity for us to improve our design. No matter what any survey tells us, getting customer feedback can help further drive success.
