There's a David Foster Wallace short story on this subject. It's called "Mister Squishy". Here's an especially relevant excerpt from an overview/interpretation

There's a David Foster Wallace short story on this subject. It's called "Mister Squishy". Here's an especially relevant excerpt from an overview/interpretation of it that I wrote[1]: Now it seems that the purpose of the focus group, rather than gathering information about consumer response to the snack-cake, is to improve the design of future focus groups. Schmidt, however, informs the reader through glimpses we are given to his thoughts during the session, that the focus groups have no material impact: rather than using the collected data to make inferences about consumer preferences, it is desirable to end with a nebulous analysis which could conclude one outcome or another based on which direction the client company is already planning on moving in: the focus groups can only confirm a decision which has already been made: a deviation on this will result in the termination of the marketing firm. [1] http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2012/12/interpretation-of-david-foster-wallaces.html http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2012/12/interpretation-of-david...