Mall intercept interview

Mall intercept interviews steps

Benefits of mall intercept interviews and surveys

• Generally, it is easier to convince someone to participate in a survey face-to-face as compared to the same over the phone or email.
• Mall intercept interviews allow interviewers to make sure they are interacting with a real person. Also, the researchers can conduct the surveys at different hours of the day to ensure an accurate sample audience.
• The memory of the experience is still afresh in the brain while the shoppers are just leaving the store. This means the data collected by the intercept interviews in the mall is highly accurate data.
• Respondents can ask for more information if they do not fully understand the question. This is not possible in case of online interviews and surveys. Similarly, interviewers too can ask open-ended questions to get a detailed response.
• Mall intercepts interviews can engage consumers during the actual act of shopping. This gives a chance to understand their thought process and what drives them to make a purchase.
• Interviewers can verify the demographics of the people they speak with. For example, age, gender, language, and location can be confirmed before starting the survey. A good interviewer asks the sensitive questions carefully or avoids them completely, depending on the situation. This cannot be achieved through the online interviews.

Points to consider while conducting a mall intercept interview

• Populations in the mall under-represent people from lower-income and elderly sections, and can create sampling bias. To minimize its effect, researchers should conduct intercept interviews outside other public locations too, such as food outlets and grocery stores.
• Beyond basic demographics, identifying target participants require screening via questions too.
• Survey results might get affected due to the interviewer bias. For instance, interviewers might feel more comfortable with the people who agree with them and be less friendly with the people who disagree with them.
• The interviewer should be considerate of the respondent’s time and so the surveys should be short and crisp so that they can be answered quickly.
• Mall intercept research involves convenience sampling and hence the results cannot be generalized to larger populations.