New Consumer Behavior Marketing Research Instruments: Online Survey Development, Testing, and Validity Verification

Internet technology has become a major communication channel throughout the industrialized world. Hundreds of radio channels, videos, and news stories flash across the World Wide Web’s electronic pipelines, but most ubiquitous of all is the use of email. With penetration rates now well over 50 percent, this communication technology is reaching the end of the early majority stage of adoption. Simultaneously, existing communication technologies, such as the home phone line and traditional mail (snail mail) use is shrinking. Methods for surveying consumers, that were developed over fifty years ago, are becoming increasingly difficult to administer when the very tools, door-todoor interview, mail, and phone are decreasingly irrelevant in the early 21 Century. The use of the Internet as a surveying/experimentation tool in consumer behavior has begun, but the first steps are tenuous and risky ones from the standpoint of research validity.