This survey was conducted by a leading mobile manufacturer venturing into making a windows based phone. The survey design is an In-house usage test (IHUT) where existing Android users were shipped a sample phone free to use for 6 months as their primary phone with an understanding to take follow-up surveys on the phone itself every 3 -4 weeks for six months. On successful completion of all follow-up surveys as per schedule, the respondents were entitled to keep the phone with them absolutely free.
Target Audience - 200 Smartphone users in India owning and using an android phone for the last one year for business or personal use. (50/50 quotas for both segments). The respondents were selected through a pre-wave survey and had to agree to provide personal identifiable information since the survey involved actually shipping and usage of the product, followed by a series of post-wave surveys.
Action/Challenges: The study had a very interesting and lucrative design as it involved the respondent receiving a brand new reputed windows phone for free in return of using it for 6 months and providing feedback. On the initial appearance, it seemed like we would be able to collect and select respondents very easily. However the big challenge was to get respondents to agree to share their personal information like phone number, shipping address etc., and we saw an extremely high number of during the pre-wave. Multiple changes to the questionnaire to tweak the language/clauses of the survey were proposed to the client to ensure instructions in the web survey were totally clear. We also advised the client to provide a temporary helpline number(showing in the survey invite as well as each page of the survey) where the respondent could call to check the validity of the offer, to get more confidence, that there was no foul play involved. After completion of initial recruitment of the pre-wave respondents, and shipping of products, then the tedious follow- surveys began. Reminder schedules had to be set up by batch as the shipping and receipt for all 200 respondents did not have to happen on the same day. Therefore before sending out a follow-up survey, we had to ensure, the minimum usage period for each respondent was met for them to be able to provide meaningful period. Proper maintenance of rosters and schedules of all mini –surveys over 6 months had to be maintained to ensure all respondents got the correct follow-up link and duly completed it.
Outcome – Diligent follow-ups and tracking over 8 months, finally we were able to complete the survey with the minimum number of complete respondents needed for an appropriate base size for analysis. Certain important feedbacks on functionality were captured, like mobile tethering ease and compatibility with certain messengers, and the needed improvements were brought about in the device.
