Comparing Phone Interview and Real-Time Feedback as Research Methods in Advertising Follow-Up Measurement

Minna Mattila, (E-mail: mimaja@econ.jyu.fi, Phone +358-40-4778669), School of Business and Economics, P.O.Box 35/MaE, FIN40014 University of Jyvaskyla, Finland

 

 

Abstract

 

This study explores the differences in results when brand preference resulting from exposure to an ad campaign is measured by two different measuring tools. The brand in this case is Fazer iLove used for functional dietary products[1]. The other one is phone interview and the other one is a real-time, SMS-based advertising effectiveness measurement tool developed by Mobile Mirror Ltd. The phone interviews and SMS-questionnaires were conducted one month apart. The compared samples are identical in terms of size, demographic variables and questions asked. The only difference is between the used brand preference measurement tools. 

 

 

Introduction

 

            The number of respondents was 300 in both studies. The age segments were 20-29 years of age, 30-55 years of age and 56-65 years of age. The samples were driven from five largest Finnish cities. The phone interviews were conducted over several days whereas in the SMS-based survey the customers were given 14 hours time to answer the questions. In Mobile Mirror’s case, over half of the respondents (56%) answer within the first hour from receiving the SMS-questionnaire. The participating customers have given their permission to receive these messages.

 

In the case of SMS-based advertising effectiveness measurement tool developed by Mobile Mirror Ltd, the customers receive a text-message over their mobile phone after they are assumed to be exposed to a certain advertisement. For example, if there is an ad on television at 6pm and the customer response towards that ad wants to be measured, the customers will receive a text-message over their mobile phone immediately after the ad for example around 6.05pm. In traditional mail surveys or phone interviews, the responses are collected randomly regardless of the time of assumed advertising exposure. Based on her answer, the customer will receive another set of questions over the mobile phone as long as all the required questions get answered.

 

Summary of Selected Results

           

            In this paper the results will be presented in detail by age segments and area of residence. But in overall, the real-time SMS-based measurement tool tends to give higher recognition and recall scores than the phone interview method. The brand preference scores obtained by SMS-based measuring are significantly lower than in phone interviews. Also the number of customers which have tried Fazer iLove products was reported lower when using SMS-measuring. The majority of customers claimed in the phone interviews that they are buying either regularly or occasionally Fazer iLove products compared to only few percents of respondents who stated the same in their SMS-asnwers. In phone interviews, the main reason of not using Fazer iLove functional dietary products was the lack of interest towards health effective products in general. The SMS-based measuring resulted in a smaller range among the different reasons of not using Fazer iLove functional dietary products.