Wearables Wednesday: When Business Priorities Come into Play

Over the course of several ✨⌚️Wearables Wednesdays⌚️✨ I've written a lot about how to choose a wearable for a particular research study. I've spoken about the theoretical, technical, and logistical considerations. One thing I haven't discussed yet is how business priorities governing these wearables play into the practical aspects of finalizing a decision. (At least, I'm assuming this comes down to business priorities.)

Namely: Why is it so flipping difficult to finalize a contract and give a wearable company my money?! 🤔

I reached out to several companies on Friday, literally trying to buy their device in bulk for research. It's Wednesday. Crickets. 😶‍🌫️

I'm not alone in this. Several of my collaborators have been griping to me over the past year about not being able to even get a response from some large companies about buying their devices for research, let alone make the purchase.

We go about things the "normal" way—by submitting research requests via their website, often with no response. Sometimes, a response comes weeks later. Most of the time, I have to call in a favor to someone that I (thankfully) have in my network, but sometimes even that doesn't end up working.

It's not like I'm expecting companies to send their best employees to woo me, but being ghosted by companies is just not fun, and it holds up the research.

It's even weirder when companies hold webinars about how their devices can be used in research, but then don't respond to researchers when they want to buy them.

The other issue is that once responses are received, we often find ourselves needing to have multiple meetings with the company just to get a final quote.

A company can have the most scientifically validated, best performing, minimally obtrusive wearable, but not be a researcher's choice for a study purely because of poor customer service or a sales process that is too cumbersome and lengthy for busy professionals.

So what’s going on here? There seems to be a gap between what is being said externally about wanting researchers to use their products and the actual experiences of working with these companies. I'm posting in hopes that *someone* who can do something about this will see this and enact some change. Make the process easy, and I think you'll gain lots of loyal scientist customers.