A communication method of collecting data involves asking the respondents some questions or talking with him in order to collect the patent data. This approach to data collection involves direct contact with respondents in the collection of information or data. Communication method may take many forms and may involve direct, face-to-face communication or contact over the telephone or by mail. In other words obtaining information from respondents may involve personal interviews, phone interviews or mail interviews.
Personal interview ;
The researcher can use personal interview to collect data. Personal interview involves face to face interaction between an interviewer and a respondent. Personal interview can take place in a variety of locations, including the home of the respondent, a street, a retail or department store, in the office or the market.
The personal interview has the advantage of offering more interaction between the interviewer and respondents that is possible in other forms of survey. This allows the interviewer to make use of certain illustrations of visual aids and to provide explanations to the respondents in the hope of reducing confusion. While this is clearly an advantage of the personal interview, it nevertheless has disadvantages. For example, the presence of an interviewer can cause a certain amount of research error or bias. Also personal interviews, like in individual depth interviews, may be rather lengthy often taking an hour or more to complete. In this case, shoppers in a busy market or shopping centre who are intercepted during a shopping trip are likely not to be enthusiastic and maybe unwilling to spend long time in answering questions. Further, personal interviews are often difficult to conduct over white geographical regions because of the issue of time and cost.
Telephone interview : where consumers or customers can be contacted through the phone, the researcher can decide to use this medium. The telephone interview is one of the most efficient and fastest methods of collecting data. It has the advantage over personal and mail survey in that projects can be designed and carried out within a matter of days. However, the marketing researcher must remember that most people are reluctant to spend a long time answering questions in a telephone interview, and for this reason questionnaires used in telephone surveys should be kept as short as possible and calls to respondents should be placed at convenient times. When the questionnaire is too long, the researcher runs the risk of having respondents hangup before the interview is completed.
I have to point out that the telephone survey is less effective than the personal interview in situations where the respondents must be shown photographs or illustrations and then asked questions concerning them.
Telephone interview may also involved interviewer bias. However, as telephone survey is not conducted on a face-to-face basis, the opportunity of interviewer bias is somewhat less than with the personal interview.
The interviewer must remember that in telephone interview in, questions involving a number of alternatives must be designed in such a way that the respondent does not have to attempt to recall a long list of alternative answers.
Researchers in nigeria are beginning to use telephone interview more and more. For example the Nigerian Television Authority has often used telephone interview with consumers or users to evaluate the quality of their services and programs.
Mail interview : the marketing research I can ask questions or administer questionnaires through the mail. This method of interview allows the researcher to use illustration and list of alternatives to questions. However, it offers the researcher the list control over the administration of the questionnaire. Since the recession has no involvement in how the questionnaire is handled from the time it is mailed to the time it is returned, he cannot really influence who will answer the questionnaire or the degree of seriousness with which it is answered. In this case, the researcher is not present to probe for explanations or to clarify questions which the respondents may have concerning the items on the questionnaire. There is also no control over the order in which questions are answered. One of the major advantages however, is that no interviewer bias can creep into the responses obtained. Because of the turnaround time required by the postal system, mail questionnaires normally take longer to administer than personal interview and phone service.
Moreover, the postal system in Nigerian is not very effective so that using Mail interview here may seem particularly impossible or difficult.
