Buffalo MBA Student - Honest Question

Hey Everyone,

I'm an MBA student in the University at Buffalo. I was asked to do market research for a class about knife sharpeners. Please don't attack me - but am I allowed to ask for help here? I'm not here to sell anything but I am supposed to learn what consumers think about knife sharpeners. Quite obviously, the class is a consumer behavior marketing course.

Would I be allowed to ask or distribute an educational survey? I just thought I'd ask because I don't know anything about knife sharpeners and I didn't want to make anyone in the forum mad.

Thanks everyone!

I don't see the problem but keep this in mind, this is not your average consumer group and you're likely to find there is really one opinion shared by most of the members regarding pretty much any sharpening device that's not a Japanese water stone.
Could be wrong.
Cheers
Matteo

Most if not all the users here freehand sharpen using stones. Are you asking about more mainstream pull through sharpeners?

The questions are more geared towards which attributes and qualities you, as a consumer, seek out in your sharpener. I do have a question that asks what kind of sharpener you (the consumer) owns which is simply electric (pull through), honing rod, or other. I'm sure most of this group would say "other" and explain the fabulous sharpeners you have.

Would you like to see it? If you think the survey is really off-base for the forum I can delete it. I'm reaching out to other forums besides kitchen-knife based forums so I'm trying not to skew the data: http://goo.gl/forms/RDGORKWvPW

I did the survey but it seems to be geared more towards pull through sharpeners?

When you said sharpener, I thought you were talking about a person. That's what I think a sharpener is, a person.

As stated, most of us here are not consumers of pull-through sharpeners, so we may not have much helpful information for you. It's a bit like asking car owners which attributes they look for in a motorcycle. I don't mean that to sound flippant, but pull-through sharpeners and waterstones are apples and oranges.
Good luck with your research.

I agree with the others.

When you said sharpener, I assumed at first you meant a person who sharpens knives professionally.

All pull through sharpeners, electric sharpeners and guided systems have a major flaw which people here are well aware of, so generally would not use.

Most here rub their knives against stones in order to sharpen then, so their selection criteria would be on the price, life span, cutting speed, hardness, etc of the stone.

I guess that the only factors that would persuade me to use a device would be if it was significantly faster and was able to do as good a job as freehand on a stone. Unfortunately though this isn't the case for any sharpening device available.

The other issue is that members here are highly educated on this topic, you'd have a hard time marketing anything knife related to them, as they'd see it for what it is.

Also to add, a honing rod doesn't actually sharpen the knife.

I would advise that you make your second question more specific. Are you meaning a knife sharpening device? A knife sharpener could be a tradesman who sharpens knives professionally. I'm unsure if you mean, "Do you sharpen your knives?" or "Do you use a sharpening device?"

Sharpener=Me
Dwvice=Rock
Attribute=Flat


Cheers

Almost forgot to say Welcome! BTW, maybe we can help you find the sharpest knife you've ever used?

Maybe looking on some cooking forum would be better?

Hehe, I also thought at first that 'sharpeners' would be about people

A Google search of this forum will find threads where pull thru sharpeners are discussed. The good, the bad and the ugly.


Some of the sharpening alternatives should be "none", sharpening service, pull thru manual, pull thermoelectric, sharpening "systems ie edge pro and stones.

Off top of my head would guess 50% do none, 35% use a service 10% use a pull thru type, the last 5 would be a mix of edge pro, stones and other.

Looking at the survey questions, it could be a student consulting project for one of the manufacturers; this board is clearly not the right demographic.

I would only add - you may of course try at different more or less knife related fora. Here (as you already found out) most member tend to use water stones. If you turn to more non-kitchen centric fora (bladeforums.com for example) you will find out that the dominant sharpening method are rigs like Lansky, KME, Spyderco, etc. What I am trying to say is that you need to choose your target group wisely to get any relevant data.

I was surprized that I could (did not though) fill-in the survey more than once. Is that intentional?

If the survey is from Buffalo why some words are in Netherlands?