Face to face interviewing - the advantages
Face to face interviews can be conducted in the respondent’s home or workplace, or in locations such as shopping malls, or even simply on the street. Such interviews allow for the use of stimulus material - for example, we can show an advertisement, prompt with a brand list or pictures of the various packaging, show animatics for advertising effect research, or simply use showcards to help explain complicated answer scales.
Face to face interviewing also allows for longer interviews than can be conducted by telephone, particularly when these are conducted in the respondent’s home. However, we must caution against very long interviews which are unduly onerous for the respondent, and reduce goodwill towards market research in general.
Face to face interviewing - the disadvantages
In general, this is also the most expensive form of interviewing as it incurs travel costs for interviewers, in addition to the usual interviewing costs. Also, interviewing in shopping malls incurs charges from the mall management, which can make this an expensive option.
Another disadvantage of face to face interviews is that they do not, generally, provide a good random sample, even when door to door sampling methods are used. This is due to the high costs incurred, and the compromise of using clustered sampling (where up to 5 interviews can be conducted in a particular street) to keep interviewing costs within the Client’s reach. Also, rigorous callback procedures - where ‘no reply’ households are recontacted - are seldom followed, due to the costs of the interviewer returning to that particular route several times.
Where face to face interviewing must be used, and the target sample is not especially common or widespread, then a useful approach is to recruit respondents by the telephone, making appointments to visit the respondents, or for them to visit a central location such as the research company offices.