What is best method of using each of the following contact methods: mail questionnaire, telephone interview, and personal interview?

 

or sitting across from you. Plus, when you submit your questionnaire, you will not have to

 

worry about your responses being tweaked by the organization because your answers are in

 

writing. Next, the first advantage for companies using this method of contact is the fact that

 

these organizations can send out mass mailers to target markets to gather data which could be

 

extremely beneficial to that company. Another advantage for companies is that mail

 

questionnaires are relatively inexpensive to use (Kolter & Keller, 2008).

 

The second contact method that marketing researchers use is the telephone interview.

 

The chief advantage of this form of communication allows organizations the ability of

 

gathering information from respondents quickly. Next, for companies to succeed and gain

 

the trust of the person on the other line, it would behoove the interviewer to call the

 

respondent by their name and listen to their answers. Doing so will enable the interviewer

 

the opportunity to scroll down the list of his/her questions and skip over questions that have

 

already been previously answered. The goal is to not be redundant and upset the person on

 

the other line. Next, another chief advantage to this form of contact is that if you asked a

 

question to a respondent and they did not understand the question you will have the ability to

 

rephrase it and even give examples to get the point across. Personally, I have asked a phone

 

interviewer to contact me at a certain time; I did this for two reasons: first, as I mentioned

 

earlier, I have children and I want to make sure they are in bed, so I can devote my full

 

attention to the questions. Second, I did this to see if they would respect my wishes of

 

contacting me when I asked. Finally, telephone interviews tend to have much higher and

 

successful rates of response (Kolter & Armstrong, 2005).  

 

Finally, the third form of researching is the personal interview. The personal

 

interview allows the interviewer the ability to meet the respondents face to face and ask

 

questions, present products and services, and talk about the benefits of what they are trying to

 

communicate in hypothetical situations. These types of interviews can take place anywhere,

 

such as home, work, shopping malls, sporting events, etc. For example, in Las Vegas, there

 

are interviewers literally at every street corner attempting to stop you to ask questions and

 

give a quick presentation. The catch is that if you buy or answer their questions you could

 

get free tickets to a show. Therefore, personal interviewers are trained to observe body

 

language and the reactions of the respondents; once they gather this info they can steer the

 

interview in a direction they see fit and go for the close (Kolter & Armstrong, 2005).

 

Personally, my preferred choice of being contacted is via mail. Like I mentioned

 

earlier, I do not have time to chat on the phone or meet face to face with anyone. Therefore,

 

I like the ability to answer questions on my time and put it down on paper. I prefer this

 

because then my answers will not be skewed to fit the company objective, it is in my own

 

words and I do not have to worry about being misquoted.

 

 References:

 

Kolter, P., & K. Keller (2008). Marketing management (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

 

 Prentice Hall

 

Kolter, P., & G. Armstrong (2005) Principles of marketing (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River,

 

 NJ: Prentice Hall