In order to know the market condition for any product, conducting a survey is one of the very important ways. Any product can be surveyed around the market and it is not dependent on the scale and size of it. The individual who is responsible for surveying the product has to understand the nature of the potential users of the product and the possibility to reach the users of the product in order to get a good survey result. For example, we consider a model of sports shoe and discuss about the survey related to the sports shoe. In this case, the surveyor has to understand the potential customers of the shoe, and he has to reach to them. Here our product is a sports shoe and so we have to go to the individuals who are interested in sports and people who regularly work out. Sometimes, surveying in local gymnasiums and sport clubs, where players come to practice, can be a good choice for the person to survey (Alreck and Settle, 2004).
First, the venue of the survey is formulated. After settling about the place, we now have to settle about the questions to be asked. After that, the mode of the subjects to be surveyed is identified. There will always be two groups, the first group will always be people who have used the product personally and the second group will be the persons who want to use the product. The mode of interviewing will be different in both the cases. The basic questions for the first group can be observed as follows:
- What are the good elements of the shoe?
- Why the shoe is comfortable and better than rest of the shoes in that price range?
- What are the aspects that the company can improve upon?
- What are the suggestions by the person who is using the shoe to the manufactures and how will he rate the product?
- Does the person is really satisfied with the product and want to buy the same when he would have to buy a new pair of sports shoes?
But for the second group, those who have not bought the product and yet want to buy it in near future, the set of questions will be slightly different:
- Why the person wants to buy the specific brand of shoe and not any thing other in that price range?
- What are the unique selling points of the shoe according to them?
- What are the bad points of the sports shoes that they are using now and why they are prompting to buy a new pair of shoes, specifically on which we are conducting the survey? (Hayashi, 2007)
However, there are some factors to be considered while operating an in-person interview as a mode of survey. It should be noted that views presented by an individual, or subject, is completely personal choice. The individual can also provide random answers too. This would create a room for errors. In order to rectify this aspect only interested candidates would be surveyed. To achieve this target, factors or evidence of decisions would be taken into consideration with the help of a counter survey questioner that would evaluate the interest level of the individual. This would be a reliability test. We will consider only the Interviews of individuals who pass this test for the final assessment.
Grading Criteria
In any survey, the grading of the points takes a real important position. These points should base on the questions and the situations in which the survey is taking place. The grading points should be also based on the product and the cost of the product. In this case, the person who is surveying has to know the target customer group of the product and must reach out to that group to get productive review of the product. After that there should be a coherent questionnaire about the product and the person surveying must thoroughly know about it. To get a full survey, we must look from both the good and bad angles of the products, and it will help the product, ultimately, to become an improved product. This is the main motto of surveying any product (Hayashi, 2007).
References
- Alreck, P., and Settle, R. (2004). The Survey Handbook. NY: McGraw Hill.
- Hayashi, T. (2007). The Possibility of Mixed-Mode Surveys in Sociological Studies. International Journal of Japanese Sociology 16(1), 51-63.