Editor's note: Michelle Finzel is vice president, full-service research, at Maryland Marketing Source Inc., a Randallstown, Md., research company. This article appeared in the May 24, 2010, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

With all the talk in the market research world about old-school vs. new-school research methodologies (i.e., CATI vs. Internet surveys, "traditional" focus groups vs. online groups, etc.), the tried-and-true method of intercept interviewing often gets left out of the discussion. Now, whether it gets left out because it has no new-school counterpart (kiosks, maybe?) or because it is simply overlooked and forgotten about in today's high-tech, high-speed world is anyone's guess, but our experience has shown us that on-site, face-to-face interviewing is not a quantitative dinosaur after all.

In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that intercept interviewing is the only remaining quota-driven, data collection methodology that can truly boast about its ability to reach a sample that is both highly targeted and incredibly random at the same time. Let's compare:

  • Online interviewing can be highly targeted, and there's a whole wide world of potential respondents out there, but one cannot usually guarantee a set quota. And online panels, while they certainly have their place, may not include the most random sample of participants.
  • Mail surveys can be quite targeted, especially since more often than not the client has the contact info of intended study participants. Achieving quotas becomes the main obstacle of mail studies, however, and depending on the scale of the project, they can be costly.
  • Telephone surveys are again list-dependent, but with a large enough sample, quotas can be easily achieved. Once that sample runs out, however, there aren't many places to go.

An unending supply of sample

Whether the target population includes adults who eat certain sandwiches, teens who may or may not be interested in shopping at a certain storefront or men who wear yellow shirts, with intercept interviewing we can go right to the heart of the matter and interview our clients' target directly. And even better, there is usually an unending supply of sample - people keep eating food, walking past shops and wearing clothes. We just go where we need to be and talk to the amount of people as determined by the research plan.

Now I'm not saying that intercept interviewing is the end-all, be-all quantitative research methodology. If that were the case, I doubt the number of fieldwork companies who provide this service would be dwindling as quickly as it is. Like other methods, intercept interviewing faces its share of obstacles as well. Obstacles such as weather, accessibility, time constraints, safety, necessary materials/samples and survey length all have to be taken into consideration and evaluated critically before heading out into the field with a name tag, pencil sharpener and comfy shoes. 

Not extinct

More and more, though, it is becoming clear that old-school or not, intercept interviewing is not extinct. It is alive and thriving, and something for which we are seeing a marked resurgence. With the assistance of PDAs and real-time, online data reporting, it's not looking quite so ancient, either.