IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ibn/ijmsjn/v13y2021i3p9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Drawbacks of the Digital Transition of Marketing Research: Implications for Decision Makers and the Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Gandolfo

Abstract

The primary aim of this paper is to draw practitioners’ attention to lesser-known risks of digital marketing research- while it enables quick and low-cost results, quality and reliability are not guaranteed. The paper also surfaces broader consequences of transitioning from traditional research, based on offline investigations and face-to-face interviews carried out by professionals, to digital research. The paper presents the results of a survey on a cohort of 200 freelance interviewers working for Italy’s main research institutions, conducted through a self-administered questionnaire. Recently online marketing research, especially through panels, has gained meaningful traction. As demand for traditional marketing research contracts, professional interviewers are experiencing a material drop in requests for their in-field services and a worsening working environment. In return, this affects the quality of on field research they can provide. This is the first study, to the best of the author’s knowledge, where issues and limitations of digital research are studied from the perspective of professional interviewers. This study enables managers and organisations that commission marketing research to make more informed decisions when facing the trade-offs between traditional and digital methods. Furthermore, it provides a view on how such choices may impact the future of professional interviewers and their services.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Gandolfo, 2021. "The Drawbacks of the Digital Transition of Marketing Research: Implications for Decision Makers and the Industry," International Journal of Marketing Studies, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 13(3), pages 1-9, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:ibn:ijmsjn:v:13:y:2021:i:3:p:9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijms/article/download/0/0/45702/48606
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijms/article/view/0/45702
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leonard J. Paas & Meike Morren, 2018. "PLease do not answer if you are reading this: respondent attention in online panels," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 13-21, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Baier-Fuentes, Hugo & Andrade-Valbuena, Nelson A. & Huertas Gonzalez-Serrano, Maria & Gaviria-Marin, Magaly, 2023. "Bricolage as an effective tool for the survival of owner-managed SMEs during crises," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    2. Kostyk, Alena & Zhou, Wenkai & Hyman, Michael R., 2019. "Using surveytainment to counter declining survey data quality," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 211-219.
    3. Burdea, Valeria & Woon, Jonathan, 2022. "Online belief elicitation methods," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    4. Ruixuan Jiang & Thomas Kohlmann & Todd A. Lee & Axel Mühlbacher & James Shaw & Surrey Walton & A. Simon Pickard, 2021. "Increasing respondent engagement in composite time trade-off tasks by imposing three minimum trade-offs to improve data quality," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(1), pages 17-33, February.
    5. Carol Azab & Jonas Holmqvist, 2022. "Discrimination in Services: How Service Recovery Efforts Change with Customer Accent," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 355-372, September.
    6. Sam Fullerton & Tammy McCullough, 2023. "Using quality control checks to overcome pitfalls in the collection of primary data via online platforms," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(4), pages 602-612, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • R00 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General - - - General
    • Z0 - Other Special Topics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ibn:ijmsjn:v:13:y:2021:i:3:p:9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Canadian Center of Science and Education (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cepflch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.