Questioning Strategies in Marketing Research Questionnaires

Book excerpt: Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Questionnaires are one of the most frequently used means in marketing research. This thesis has the objective to analyze questionnaires with the main focus on the linguistic description of questions. Whereas a lot of research on questionnaires from a social science perspective and a marketing perspective can be found, linguistic research on questionnaires is rare. The research question of this thesis can be formulated as follows: What are the differences between questionnaires used in personal face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and self-administered questionnaires and how are these differences reflected in language? Thus, several different questionnaires (cf. corpus) have been analyzed and compared. Following the introduction in chapter one, chapter two of the thesis is dedicated to marketing research. The purpose of surveys is explained as well as the sampling procedure and the pretest. This thesis focuses on primary research. Chapter three explains the symbolic interaction theory for social research. This question-answer model describes the interview situation. Chapter four is dedicated to the three different survey techniques (personal interviews, telephone interviews and self-administered questionnaires). Each of them will be discussed in detail. Chapter five deals with response effects in questionnaires and explains the influence of question words, question form, question structure and question topic on responses. Whereas chapter six focuses on the macrostructure (overall structure) of questionnaires, chapter seven focuses on the mircostructure. Question form (open-ended vs. closed questions), sentence types and sentence form will be discussed as well as wh-interrogatives and the you attitude . In chapter eight a summary of the language differences is provided for each type of questionnaire separately. Finally, in the conclusion in chapter nine, some final remarks on the topic will be made. Inhaltsverzeichnis:Table of Contents: 1.INTRODUCTION1 2.MARKETING RESEARCH5 2.1Primary Research: Surveys6 2.2Sampling7 2.3The Pretest8 3.THE SYMBOLIC INTERACTION THEORY FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH9 4.QUESTIONING MODES11 4.1Personal Interviews11 4.1.1Advantages of Personal Interviews12 4.1.2Disadvantages of Personal Interviews13 4.2Telephone Interviews14 4.2.1Advantages of Telephone Interviews14 4.2.2Disadvantages of Telephone Interviews15 4.3Self-administered Questionnaires16 4.3.1Advantages of [...]