Using the survey teeth, which involves drafting a questionnaire and sending it out to a sample size of the population, it may perhaps be possible to discover for example, why Blackberry population dropped in comparison to its competitor’s whose market share continued to grow. There are various types of surveys used by marketers to execute their research; these include mail surveys, telephone surveys, personal interview surveys (to allow for more depth) and web-based surveys.
Mail surveys are more cost effective if all the respondents complete and return them, but may be Just an unnecessary expense if a low number of respondents get back to the company tit the required information ( Perpetual. D Jar and McCarthy Blackberry may compile a simplified survey, as the interviewer will not be present to assist respondents, and send them out to a large sample of the population but will have to wait for a lengthy time to get the responses back which may not be ideal. Its competitors Samsung and Apple will continue to get ahead if Blackberry opts for a slower response method which will not give research results promptly.
Telephone surveys are a much quicker method to contact respondents. Whereby…… The down- side is that most consumers are usually suspicious of unknown callers and may Just suspend briefly to Just get through the questions. According to( Perpetual. D Jar and McCarthy ‘about a 3rd refuse to answer any questions’ Personal interview surveys are more in depth but come at a rather hefty fee. A consumer may feel more cared for and their responses more important than when the survey is conducted via the telephone or mail.
These sort of personalized interviews can take place at the interviewee’s home, place of work, or what’s becoming increasingly popular is interviews at shopping malls (Wild, J and Diggings, C 2013 Pl 15). The interviewer can the actual objectives of the research itself. The interviewer can use his/ her discretion as to which method will be more appropriate for Blackberry. Personal interviews are further divided into three categories; door to door interviews, mall intercepts (which were previously mentioned) and executive interviewing.
Within door-to-door interviews, the interviewer literally goes to each respondents place of residence (door) to ask if they can conduct the interview. The main disadvantage of this method however is the interviewers bias who may be leading him or her towards a certain answer to a question. On the positive side, if Blackberry uses this method it ay more accurately display people’s attitudes and feelings about the smartened company as a brand, as body language can also be utilized and all senses (Wide and Diggings, C 2013 Pl 17).
According to Wide & Diggings ( 2013, p. 117) executive interviewing involves ‘interviewing people about issues relating to industrial products or services. ‘ This requires the interviewee to be well informed about the interview topic and to identify the relevant people to answer the questions. Overall advantages and disadvantages of personal interviews in relation to Blackberry> Observation Another very important type of quantitative research is observation. It involves simply observing the subject of the research then drawing conclusions.
According to Wide and Diggings,C (2000;131) It is defined as, ‘the systematic process of recording the behavioral patterns of people, objects, and occurrences without questioning them. ‘ (No interactions with the respondents are made therefore making the research more objective, as subjectivity on the side of the interviewer is removed. For example, researchers can simply observe consumers buying behavior in-store, for instance in a shop that sells smartness, taking note of whether or not they purchase a certain brand, how often they switch and what they switch to.
On the other hand, it may be extremely time consuming because the researcher cannot guarantee that the consumer will buy a certain smartened brand in order to make the comparison. Experimentation According to Wild, J and Diggings, C (2000,p. 138) Experimentation is defined as, ‘a research investigation in which conditions are controlled so that an independent variable can be manipulated to test a hypothesis about a dependent variable.
