May 2nd: Email from Martha's Marketing to Sheila McCarthy

Hi Sheila,

You seem to be favouring using a written questionnaire to gather you market information. This may be a good choice. However, it's important to consider the advantages and disadvantages of this form of market research. Here's a list of the pros and cons of this method:

Pros

• Very cost-effective when compared to carrying out face-to-face interviews. This is especially true with a large sample size and where the sample is spread over a wide geographical area. The cost savings rise as the number of questions asked increases.
• Easy to analyse. Computer software means that most organisations can do this in-house.
• Familiar to most people. Generally, completing a written questionnaire doesn't make people nervous.
• Reduce bias. Using the same questions to all respondents means that interviewers' opinions don't influence the answers given by respondents. There are no verbal or visual clues to influence the respondent.
• Less intrusive than phone surveys or face-to-face interviews. Respondents are free to complete in their own time.

Cons

• Possible low response rate. This can lower dramatically the confidence you can have in the results you obtain. However, well-designed questionnaires usually produce high response rates.
• Inability to probe the answers given by respondents, who often want to 'qualify' their answers. Well-designed questionnaires allow liberal space for comments, which can overcome these problems.
• About 90% of communication comes from visual images, which are lacking in written questionnaires. So surveys looking at issues and attitudes of a sensitive nature may be severely affected by this factor.
• Is the response you get actually from your targeted respondents? This sounds odd, but business questionnaires are often passed to others to complete. Children can respond to written questionnaires received at home as a prank. Home partners may respond on behalf of working partners.
• Questionnaires are not suited to some people, who may lack the necessary level of education to respond. What about people with partial sight?

Speak soon,

Martha

May 4th: Email from Sheila McCarthy to Martha's Marketing

Hi Martha,

Thanks for the advice. I've had some time to think about what you said, and would like to go ahead with using a written questionnaire. I think the customer records we've got give us a good base of ex-customers to survey, so I'm confident that a questionnaire would generate some really useful information, or market research as I'm getting used to calling it. Do you think you could pay me a visit so we can discuss putting the questionnaire together? Anytime next week suits me.

Sheila

May 5th: Email from Martha's Marketing to Sheila McCarthy

Hi Sheila,

Yes I'm sure we could meet soon to take this further. But there are some additional things for you to consider. I've listed these below:

Final additional thoughts for action

1. Pre-notification letters
   This can be an excellent, but costly way of increasing your response rate. If your sample size is small (as I believe yours is) then it's very worthwhile considering. Pre-notification letters do the following:
   • Describe the reasons for carrying out the research
   • Explain why the respondent was chosen
   • Give reasons why they should complete the questionnaire - is there some sort of incentive you can offer to encourage a response?
   • Explain how the results will be used
2. Covering letter
   This is an essential part of a survey carried out by written questionnaire. It can be the difference between receiving a response and not. Here are the main characteristics of a covering letter in this case:
   • Friendly tone
   • Be brief
   • Aim to persuade the respondent
   • If the questionnaire will take less than 5 minutes to complete, say so
   • Sign the letter? If so, who should sign it? Personal touch important?
   • State confidentiality/anonymity policy
   • Give a phone number and name of someone to call if respondent has queries
   • Give the cut-off date if relevant
3. Follow-up of non-respondents
   This has been found to be a powerful tool for increasing the response rate. You should consider using this technique.
   
   Finally, it sounds like you've decided on the sample you're going to use. If however, you feel you need more help, try looking at this Market Research information to gain a better idea. (http://www.bized.co.uk/timeweb/reference/using_mres.htm)

Hope this helps,

Martha

May 8th: Email from Sheila McCarthy to Martha's Marketing

Dear Martha,

Thanks very much for the advice and that useful link on choosing a sample. I think I'm ready to go ahead. Let's meet as discussed and get this thing moving!

Sheila

May 12th: Email from Martha's Marketing to Sheila McCarthy

Dear Sheila,

Sorry to disappoint you at the meeting. I'm not really being negative. It's just that I really don't want you to fail in your new venture by having not prepared sufficiently.

Just to go back over the main points I made today:

It's important to consider the time the research is going to take. This is often under-estimated by organisations interested in running a market research survey. Here's a method of planning how long it will take:

You seem to be looking to get started on your new business venture by the start of the autumn period. Have you really thought through how long all of these stages will take?

Let me know what you decide. If you don't want to go ahead with using us to carry out the research, then I'll invoice you next week for the time I've put into this so far.

Best wishes,

Martha