Consumer Intercept Surveys

Consumer intercept surveys, as the name suggests, aims to intercept consumers or potential consumers in their natural environment and deliver a short structured questionnaire on their consumer habits, preferences, perceptions or behaviour.

Consumer intercept surveys can incorporate limited product testing, as in the case of taste tests of a new food product.

They can also focus on a comparative analysis of several competing products known to the consumer, or provide good estimates of brand recall and recognition. Surveys can also sample the opinions of consumers immediately after sampling a product (airline consumer surveys where passengers in certain seats are asked to complete a questionnaire on customer service is one example). Usually however, consumer intercept research usually takes the form of a one to one interview, rather than a self administered questionnaire.

Consumer intercepts are usually held to gain a fast and quick overview, as opposed to the more in depth focus group methods or stratified or random selected samples, for which results can be generalized to a total population.

Field research interviewers are provided with interview blanks with detailed instructions regarding stemming and question flow, and are trained and role play each interview before conducting interviews. The make up of the target group guides the selection of ethnicity, age group, and other personal characteristics of interviewers.

The strategic advantages of consumer intercept surveys are the speed in which they can be conducted, their low cost, and the ability to poll a large number of consumers (We typically use a dozen or more interviewers stationed at several locations for 2 to 3 days, resulting in 200 to 2,500 responses). As the questionnaires are usually structured or semi structured, coding is straightforward and results can be provided in short period of time. The major disadvantage of the consumer intercept survey method is that it entails "convenience sampling" meaning that especially in the case of small samples, results may not be as representative as samples developed through random or stratified sampling. However, intercept surveys remain a powerul technique, and in many cases can approach the reliability of much more expensive and objective sampled samples.

Orient Pacific Century maintains trained field research teams in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and through our partners in Thailand, Korea, China, and Japan, supervised by field research supervisors in each country.