RW Humes & Company

in-depth telephone interviews

In-depth telephone interviews are conversations with a single respondent or small groups of respondents using the telephone. Telephone interviews are usually conducted by calling a respondent at his or her office and last between 30 and 60 minutes.

Advantages

Telephone interviews offer many of advantages of the in-depth personal interviews such as probing and the absence of social or group pressures.
Telephone interviews are more economical than in-depth personal interviews when respondents are widely dispersed, particularly when they are in other countries.

Disadvantages

In addition to the disadvantages offered by in-depth personal interviews, in-depth telephone interviews include the following disadvantages:

The interviewer cannot observe respondent's non-verbal communications.
Respondents cannot view concept presentations or interact with demonstrations unless these materials are sent to respondents prior to the interview. Because of the confidential nature of marketing research, the majority of our clients wish to limit the exposure of their concepts and demonstrations. This disadvantage can be partially overcome with Internet-assisted interviews.

Tools

in-depth telephone interviews