Apple Market Research

Apple has hired Advanis to conduct surveys of Apple customers. This seems something of a non-Apple move (Steve Jobs was famous for not asking the customer what they wanted), but does appear to be legitimate. I received one today regarding an iPod that I purchased a couple months back. (As an aside, iPods are definitely not hot right now but I figured I should go ahead and buy an iPod Classic while they’re still around so that I can have my entire music collection in my car. 160GB is a lot bigger than any of the flash options and I could see it being discontinued at any time.)

Interestingly enough I didn’t buy the iPod from Apple directly, I got it through Amazon. Apple must have picked up my details when I synced it with iTunes. It came from MarketResearch@InsideApple.Apple.com and was sent through an Apple server (which is why it is legitimate). Advanis is a Canadian market research firm and other than the URL the survey itself is completely branded by Apple.

Here’s what the email looks like:

For what it’s worth, I did not take the short iPod survey. If Apple’s reading: I bought it because it’s got a ton of storage and I have a feeling you won’t buy able to buy iPods with this much storage for very long.