Industrial mail surveys: The costs and benefits of telephone pre‐notification

Abstract

Industrial Mail Surveys: The Costs and Benefits of Telephone Pre-notificationOver the past 5 years a trend towards increased usage of mail surveys has been identified and the reasons for this as well as the advantages of mail surveys are discussed. Low response rates form the major disadvantage of the technique and advantages of prenotification which can help to increase response rates are discussed. A limited number of studies exist on the effect of prenotification and its associated costs and benefits. This paper reports the results of an experimental study on telephone prenotification within the industrial sector (n = 235). Results showed that a significantly higher (14%) response rate was achieved when individuals were pre-notified, but there was no significant difference between the groups which were contacted directly and indirectly. Time of day and day of week had no significant effect on the success of pre-contacting. Return times were shortest for the group contacted directly and longest for the control group, but not significantly so. A call duration of around 6 minutes appeared to give the highest probability of response. A cost increase of over 100% per return was associated with the telephone pre-notification technique. The paper offers practical advice to researchers planning an industrial mail survey.

The drop and collect survey among industrial populations: theory and empirical evidence

“…This result might be related to a finding by Mitchell and Nugent (1991), which concluded that personal prenotification did increase response rates only insignificantly compared to impersonal prenotification. Hence, we would suggest that the underlying theoretical model appears to find support, albeit its absolute effectiveness might be challenged in a DCS.…”

SME Survey Methodology: Response Rates, Data Quality, and Cost Effectiveness

“…Using a letter to pre-notify has, generally, been more costly than no prenotification (Albaum & Strandskov, 1989), but has been cost effective compared to a commitment card (Duhan & Wilson, 1990). The use of telephone pre-notification has not been found to be cost effective compared to a no pre-notification control (Mitchell & Nugent, 1991).…”

Postcard Prenotification in Industrial Surveys: Further Evidence

“…Response cost-effectiveness: Response cost-effectiveness equals "total survey costs" divided by the number of usable responses. "Total survey costs" refers to tangible survey costs such as postage and printing costs, and excludes less tangible costs such as time and manpower (Duhan and Wilson 1990;Mitchell and Nugent 1991).…”