The kosher food business is a $13 billion business, selling food primarily to Jewish people who keep kosher. At that scale, the kosher food industry could afford to hire any one of the nation’s top research companies to help it expand to secular markets. Instead, the kosher food industry turned to the Google Consumer Surveys, the Do-It-Yourself research tool introduced by Google 81 days ago (#gsurveys).

Here’s the one (and only one) survey question posed, at a cost of a $100:

Now certainly if you were going to launch an all-out attack on the non-kosher food business, you would want to keep that a secret, and you would not want the results of your survey made public, especially if those results were unflattering. You’d think so.

But Google has a way to sweeten the pot. If you conduct a project using Google Consumer Surveys, Google gives you a chance to save 10% on the cost of your survey, if you are willing to make the results of your project public. That’s right: you ask the question, everyone in the world can see the answers. And so it comes to be, that we learn that half of everyone answering the kosher question thinks kosher food is overpriced.

Yikes.

If you were mounting an assault, to turn a $13-billion business into a $15-billion business, or a $20-billion business, would you use a DIY research tool? Would you make your results public, so you could save 10%? Here’s how the Google proposition looks when you are about to launch the survey (offer highlighted by red arrow below):

Further, Google goes on to say, once you make your survey results public, they show up in Google searches.

And, in a quick Google search, sure enough, the survey is highlighted on the first page of search results:

So, the kosher food industry saved $10 on the survey — which is 0.0000001% of $10 billion — and let the world know that their product is overpriced.

For those with something at stake, no matter how small, do not DIY unless you are qualified to DIY. If you are not sure if you know how to DIY, ask for help.

Fail off-Broadway, not in Macy’s window.

To see everything that we have written about Google Consumer Surveys, click here.