Abstract:

Sceptical opinions have been voiced about the use of telephone interviews, in spite of its advantages. In particular in countries with a low degree of telephone penetration the lower representativity of the sample and consequently, poorer survey results are expected to raise problems. Another question is whether the conditions of telephone interviews, too, produce differences with personal (face-to-face) interviews and whether all these factors play a role in image research. The survey described in this paper involves the measurement of features characterising supermarkets. A comparison was made between several identical surveys conducted in different countries. An analysis of results obtained shows that telephone surveys will produce the same results as personal surveys, provided that there are fairly marked differences in objects and that the number of relevant basic characteristics is limited.