You know that old saying, “you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar?” As silly as it sounds, it works so well in the real world. Yesterday on my way to class, I noticed a table with a large group of students gathering around it. Upon looking closer, they were all filling out surveys. Now I may not be in on the hippest things to do on campus, but generally us college students aren’t super excited about surveys. They are annoying, time consuming… bleh.
Well, next to the surveys were 5 big bowls of different candy, and when students finished the surveys, they got a cup and could fill it with as much candy as they could fit. I think NU Dining Services deserves a round of applause for this one. They mastered a brilliant business technique… taking something that isn’t so fun and incentivizing it, and just knowing about the incentive makes it fun for the user. Everyone wanted some candy, and suddenly filling out a survey didn’t seem so bad at all.