When is the opinion survey method used and what is the effectiveness of the method.

Survey of buyer‘s intention or preference is one of the important methods of demand forecasting. It is also called ―Opinion Survey Method‖.

Under this method, consumer buyers are requested to indicate their preference and
willingness about a particular product. They are about to reveal their future purchase plans with respect to specific items.

They are expected to give answer to question like what items they intends to buy, in what quantity, why, where, what quality they expect, how much they are planning to spend etc.
Generally, the field surveys are conducted by the marketing research departments of the company or hiring the services of outside research organization consisting of learned and highly qualified professionals.
The heart of the survey is questionnaire. It is a comprehensive one covering almost all questions either directly or indirectly in a most intelligent manner. It is prepared by an expert body who are specialist in the field or marketing.

The questionnaire is distributed among the consumer either through mail or in person by the company. Consumers are requested to furnish all relevant and correct information.
The next step is to collect the questionnaire from the consumers for the purpose of
evaluation. The materials collected will be classified, edited and analyzed. If any bias prejudices, exaggerations, artificial or excess demand creation are found at the time of answering they would be eliminated.

The information so collected will now be consolidated and reviewed by the top
executives with lot of experiences. It will be examined thoroughly. Inferences are drawn and conclusions are arrived at. Finally a report is prepared and submitted to the management for taking final decisions.

The success of the survey method depends on many factors:
1. The nature of the question asked.
2. The ability of the surveyed.
3. The representative of the sample
4. Nature of the product
5. Characteristics of the market
6. Consumer behavior
7. Techniques of analysis
8. Conclusion drawn etc.

The management should not entirely depend on the result of survey reports t project future demand. Consumer may not express their honest and real views and as such they may give only the broad trends in the market. In order to arrive, at right conclusion, field surveys should be regularly checked and supervised.
This method is simple and useful to the producers who produce goods in bulk. Here the burden of forecasting is put on the customers.
However this method is not much useful in estimating the future demand of the
household as they run in a large numbers and also do not freely express their future demand requirements. It is expensive and so difficult. Preparation of questionnaire is not an easy task.
At best it can be used for short term forecasting.
When is the opinion survey method used and what is the effectiveness of the method. When is the opinion survey method used and what is the effectiveness of the method. Reviewed by enakta13 on February 11, 2013 Rating: 5

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