Marketing Research for Managers, 3rd Edition

9	Who asks the questions?

9.1	Introduction
9.2	Interviewers: ‘horses for courses’
9.3	What do interviewers do?
9.4	Who are the interviewers?
9.5	How are interviewers controlled?
9.6	Choosing a good fieldwork agency
9.7	Using an agency for fieldwork
9.8	Asking the questions yourself
9.9	Summary

9.1 Introduction

An interview is understood as ‘a conversation for the purpose of gathering information’ and this definition emphasizes the functional nature of the interview situation. Thus, although an interview may have the superficial structure of a conversation, it is actually a situation in which one party to the interchange, the interviewer, is required to obtain the answers to a predetermined set of questions or ...