CPO Sample: Sometimes Money Well Spent

In Friday's edition of The Wall Street Journal, Carl Bialak makes two points about interviewing cellphone-only consumers by phone:

1. Gallup now supplements its landline phone samples with cellphone-only samples, but it does not reimburse its respondents.

2. Including cellphone-only consumers in political surveys might not be worth it.

First, we believe it is important to reimburse respondents in exchange for their time and insight. Since most people are not on an unlimited calling plan, they might have to pay for those minutes out of their own pocket. Paying a flat incentive is the most economical way to ensure the respondent has no extra cost.

We believe the respondent's cooperation is something we cannot take for granted, so we comply with these basic rules:

1. The respondent's privacy is crucial to us.

2. A respondent should not incur costs by cooperating with us beyond the time he/she spends.

3. Any respondent has the option of opting out of a study at any point in the survey.

While not reimbursing respondents for their used minutes might save money in the short term, we sincerely believe this practice will hurt market research in the long term.

As far as the second point is concerned: We have conducted a number of studies with dual samples, cellphones, and landline phones, and frequently we do find significant differences among the cellphone-only sample.

Bialak's article tackles the issue of political polling; since voter turnout is low among the segment with a high cellphone-only percentage, not including this segment might not make a big difference to the poll. But when you look at the market potential for an HDTV or at consumer behavior of Millenials, it does make a difference if you exclude 30% of that market from your research.

The bottom line is: Each study is different. Sometimes you can save the extra money by skipping the cellphone-only sample, and sometimes you need to spend it.