INTERNET-BASED & MAIL SURVEY: A HYBRID PROBABILISTIC SURVEY APPROACH

Mathew Parackal, Lecturer, Department of Marketing, University of Otago, Duniden, New Zealand.

Email: mparackal@business.otago.ac.nz

Keywords

Internet-based survey; Probability surveys; Hybrid survey approach; Response rate; Representativeness; Marketing research

Abstract

The Internet has become a popular survey medium among marketing researchers. The current coverage of the Internet however prevents it from being used as the sole medium in probability surveys. This paper explains a hybrid survey approach that used the Internet and the postal system to collect data from a probability sample. The paper presents the rationale of the approach and reports the results of a study that implemented the approach on two sub-groups. The paper also reports on the representativeness of the survey participants, the response rate received for the two survey media, and the overall response rate.