I wrote in Eric Braden's Intelligent Carpets about using the Chinese General Solicitation and a real world example. At the end of that post I invited readers to guess what we were really testing in the following:We went to a suburban mall and invited people to sit down and try some spaghetti in red sauce. They were given small paper bowls of commercially available spaghetti in a commercially available red sauce and had to select plastic utensils -- knife, fork, spoon -- from some bins, along with napkins and drinks (two branded colas, two branded non-colas). They could go back through as many times as they wished. They were given US$5 for their trouble. Participants were told we were testing the sauce; would it be successful in that geographic market?
What we were really testing was the optimal length of spaghetti for eating. Given that commercially available sauces and commercially available spaghetti were already established (branded) in the consumer's mind, we were learning if the length of spaghetti affected how much people ate. Some people twirl their spaghetti on a spoon, some on the plate, some cut their spaghetti.
By the way, gender, age and ethnicity didn't seem to matter. The winner was spaghetti that took 3-5 turns on the fork from plate to mouth with the big majority being 3½. Too many turns and people knocked spaghetti off and started again. Too little turns and they knocked it off and started again. Cutting spaghetti on the plate also occurred but not enough to make that much of a dent or difference. Three to five turns and people came back for more. Anything else and they often didn't even finish the bowl we originally gave them.
Sorry not to post this earlier and I hope it was worth the wait...
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