If you’re a marketing director and you’re trying to get insights into consumer behavior, you might be considering online surveys and/or telephone surveys. The Marketing Workshop, Inc. has found some points to consider when choosing between the two:

1. Both telephone and Internet-based methods of data collection may not be representative of your target audience. If you’re doing phone surveys,  the younger age groups are under-represented with the prevalence of cell phones. They might also not be as responsive to telephone surveys as their older counterparts.

2. Never switch from one method of data collection to another without a parallel study to determine which differences may be due to methodology and which are due to changes in the marketplace. By splitting the sample (half phone and half Internet) the phone portion provides current tracking data against which to compare past efforts while the Internet portion provides a base against which to measure future Internet findings.

3. Consider what measures are most needed for your study. If unaided measures are most important, it may be that the phone methodology works best. However, if aided measures such as brand ratings are most important, then the Internet may be the preferable methodology for speed, timing and access.

4. Consider the purpose of the research in choosing between phone and Internet. One example is that a self-administered Internet survey may be more objective and provide better answers if there is some degree of hesitancy of verbalizing a fear or comment on a sensitive subject (such as sex or gun control or employee attitudes). Also, there may well be situations where expanded, thoughtful answers are desired.

5. Whether the methodology is phone or Internet, over time the measures will move in the same direction. However, absolute changes should not be compared across methodologies.

For the complete report, be sure to visit The Market Workshop research data.

Sunday, July 19th, 2009, 6:00 am   |   Research  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback