Marketing Research

Q: A new graduate hired by the marketing research department of a major telephone company is asked to prepare a questionnaire to determine household preferences for telephone calling cards. The questionnaire is to be administered in mall­intercept interviews. Using the principles of questionnaire design, critically evaluate this questionnaire.
A: Although it was stated that the questionnaire would be administered in mall­intercept interviews all other aspects of the process were not included. If they are doing personal interviews, they can be more conversational than what is listed and include visual aids and room for clarification. They should also consider filming the interviews or using audio recording because recording comments verbatim is very difficult and often results in error.
Question 10 should be moved up behind the other basic identification questions 1­4. For questions 1­4 it should be explained why the researcher is asking for this information in order to overcome respondents’ inability or unwillingness to answer. It should also include the education level of the respondent.
Question 7 should be moved behind the identification questions to introduce the topic of calling cards for adequate question structure. This will allow the respondent to communicate their beliefs, motives and attitudes without bias. It should not included the brand AT&T because the respondent might not be informed about this brand’s calling card.
The researcher either needs to inform them about it or just use it as a general question for all calling cards. This question is also likely to gain answers such as, “I like them” or
“They’re good” which does not help the researcher. I would suggest rephrasing the question to be more specific. Maybe something like, “What do you think about the quality of the calling card you have used personally during the past month?” to overcome the respondents unwillingness or inability to answer. This would also require the researcher to provide a way for the respondent to indicate that they haven’t used a calling card in the last month. Question 6 should be more specific. The words infrequently and very frequently do not give enough information. They should use options like every day, three times per week, once per week and less than once per week. This makes it less confusing for the respondent and provides the researcher with information that is more accurate.
Question 8 needs to state whether the categories can have the same rating as others or if each category should have unique rankings. I don’t think question 9 is a necessary question. Based on previous questions, the researcher should be able to determine if calling cards are important to the respondent.

It is not stated if this questionnaire is going to be pretested. It should be to make sure questions are not being interpreted in the wrong way and that they are all understood by a typical respondent.