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How is the Internet changing the world of market research? This study compares four methods of collecting survey data and reveals that newer methods have significant but not overwhelming advantages over older methods, such as mail. While conventional mail and fax continue to garner slightly higher response rates than e-mail and Web forms, they are of course slower and more expensive. Unlike most earlier studies on this issue, the authors look at fixed and variable costs of the methods and argue that for an increasing proportion of the North American population, the cost and convenience advantages of the newer methods can often make up for lower response rates and inaccurate e-mail addresses.
It is just past midnight and a fax machine receives a call, a computer receives an e-mail message, and a postal worker begins processing the mail picked up earlier that evening. A survey from a researcher is on the way. The researcher might be a university faculty member, an employee of a market research firm, or a staff member of a firm seeking opinions from fellow employees. The fax was sent by a software package that automatically inserts the addressee's information from the database into a fax form of the survey. One e-mail program is sending the survey to recipients selected from a database. Another e-mail program is sending an email invitation asking other recipients selected from a database to visit an electronic form of the survey at a Web site on the Internet. Earlier, the survey was printed, envelopes were stuffed, mailing labels and postage applied, and the survey was placed in the mailbox. Data collection is under way, and the question is: Which method is best?
Research on the competitive advantages of new data collection methods is timely due to the rapid acceptance of the Internet, especially in industrialized countries. It is estimated that more than 31 million North American adults were using the Internet and e-mail at least weekly in 1997, up from 20 million in 1996, and that the number of users should approach 70 million in 1998. The speed that such changes are occurring makes it difficult for researchers to choose the most appropriate method. In addition, new methods, such as faxing over the Internet are...