Questionnaires by Post and Email
c) Postal Questionnaires
Questionnaires can be posted to addresses that you have obtained through your customer database or be sent via a general mail-shot (visit the mail-shot article for further information). This involves you sending the questionnaire directly to postal addresses in which the receiver will fill out and return back to you on completion.
You can also buy in targeted mailing lists that people have subscribed to on a certain subject or generally gathered from regional or national sources: Yellow Pages, Thompson Locals, web sites, regional daily and weekly newspapers etc.
Advantages:
- Can cover a wide region of the population
- Can be highly targeted
- Affordable
- Respondents have time to think
- Respondents will be more honest in their reply due to the absence of interviewer bias
- Beneficial if the person is difficult to contact personally
Disadvantages:
- Low response rate as people will treat the questionnaire as ‘junk mail’
- Misunderstood questions cannot be explained
- Questionnaires may be returned incomplete
d) E-mail Questionnaires
This can be seen as the electronic way of the above and therefore questionnaires are sent directly to people via e-mail. People are then expected to complete the questionnaire on their computer and return the completed questionnaire back to you, again, via e-mail. Although a less common strategy, you may send a questionnaire via e-mail in which the recipient will pr int it off to fill out before sending it back to you by post.
Advantages:
- Low cost
- Quick to send as a list of e-mail addresses just needs to be entered instead of sending each one individually
- Higher response than postal questionnaires
- If you have a web site: market research can also result in higher visitor numbers
Disadvantages:
- People may treat the questionnaire as SPAM (or junk mail) and consequently you could end up with a number of complaints from annoyed people (damaging your image)
- Misunderstood questions cannot be explained
- Questionnaires may be returned incomplete
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