SUGING

SUGing, or Selling Under the Guise of research (also known as “sugging”), is the act of telemarketing or pre-qualifying customers while pretending to conduct a legitimate survey. Because it is, by definition, a practice that seeks to deceive the respondent, it is an unethical business and research practice. In addition, there is essentially no interest in the “data” being gathered other than to help make the sales pitch more effective.

It also has the side effect of increasing the victim's suspicion of subsequent legitimate survey contacts, thereby reducing the population of individuals readily willing to answer survey questions. In short, SUGing not only represents illegitimate and thus unethical research in itself, but it also has a long-term negative impact on legitimate research projects. SUGing is proscribed by numerous public opinion, market research, and direct marketing trade associations.

In SUGing, the respondent's answers to the purported survey questions serve as a means of setting up a sales pitch. This is in contrast with legitimate survey research, in which obtaining the respondent's answers is the desired goal. Questions used in SUGing, therefore, are often superficial or biased to create a favorable disposition toward the sales solicitation. In some cases, however, SUGing solicitations can be extremely detailed in order to develop a detailed profile of the respondent to facilitate a custom tailored sales pitch that arrives later (e.g. via mail), which itself may represent another violation of ethical obligations to protect respondent confidentiality. Regardless of the nature of the questions, a key feature of a SUGing solicitation is its deceptiveness. There is no indication of the true nature of the interview until the sales pitch is given.

SUGing is illegal in several jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada, and the European Union. As a complicating factor, though, there is some international disagreement about the exact meaning of SUGing. Although public opinion and market research organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and continental Europe all define SUGing as selling under the guise of research, in Canada the S also stands for “soliciting” (giving the term a similar meaning to FRUGing, which is fund-raising under the guise of research), and deceptive survey-like sales pitches are known as MUGing (marketing under the guise of research).

One area where legitimate survey research may seem like SUGing is the practice of “sales waves.” A sales wave attempts to determine the sales potential of a new product by offering to sell the new product to a respondent immediately at, or soon after, the conclusion of a legitimate market research interview about the product. Although the intent of a sales wave is to understand product demand and not to sell the product, the structure of a sales wave is similar enough to SUGing as to potentially create misunderstanding and resentment among many respondents.

The extent of SUGing is difficult to estimate, although empirical research on nonresponse in North America has indicated that up to 50% of individuals have received a SUGing call or mailing.