Depth Interviews

• To explore needs, desires and feelings

• Often used in motivational research

• Aim to elicit unconscious as also other types

of material relating especially to personality
dynamics and motivations
• Greater skill required for interviewer

• It may projective or non-projective based on

questions asked

• Indirect questions on irrelevant subjects

provide information that can be related to the
informants’ behavior or attitude towards the
subject under study
• For instance, informant may be asked on his
frequency of air travel and he might at later
stage might be asked to narrate his opinion
concerning the feelings of some other man
who gets killed in air accident.

• Reluctance to fly can then be related to replies

to questions of the latter nature.

• If depth interviews involves questions of

indirect type – Projective depth interview
Other Methods :Warranty cards:
• Postal sized cards used by dealers of
consumer durables to collect information
regarding their products

• Information sought is printed in form of

questions on Warranty cards which is placed
inside package along with a request to
consumer to fill and post back
Distributor / Store audit:
• Performed by distributors as well as
manufacturers through their salesmen at
regular intervals
• Distributor gets retail store audited through
sales and use such information to estimate the
market size, market share, seasonal purchasing
pattern and so on
• Data obtained not by questioning but by
observation
Pantry audit:
• Data is obtained by examination of consumers’
pantry
• Collects information on types, quantities and
prices of commodities consumed
• Objective – what type of consumers buy certain
brands and certain products with assumption
that contents of pantry accurately portrays
consumer’s preferences
• Supplemented by direct questioning
Consumer Panel:
• Extension of pantry audit on regular basis
• Set of consumers are arranged to come to an
understanding to maintain detailed daily
records of their consumption and the same is
made available to investigator on demand
• Consumer panel is a sample of consumers
who interviewed repeatedly over a period of
time.
• Types – Transistory and continuing consumer
panel
• Transistory – set up to measure the effect of
particular phenomenon
• Continuing – set up for an indefinite period
with a view to collect data on particular aspect
of consumer behaviour( say consumer
expenditure ) over time, generally at periodic
inetvals
Content analysis:
• Analysing the contents of documentary materials
such as books, mgazines, newspapers and
contents of all other verbal materials which can
either be spoken or printed
• Content analysis before 1940’s – qualitative
concerning certain characteristics that can be
identified or counted
• Since 1950’s content analysis – Qualitative
( Message )