Conducting survey research through an enhanced online web survey procedure

Those companies or marketing personnel that need to survey or communicate with customers can save significantly on transaction costs (time, labor, etc.) by using an enhanced web survey procedure while maintaining the rigor of quality research. This study demonstrates the steps and software needed to conduct web-based surveys based on a recent survey conducted by the authors. The use of mail-merge type software to send a customized e-mail to potential respondents and the use of software to encode incoming responses into a database file without keyboard entry of responses is discussed. Various software, including HTML editing software, e-mail based merge software, CGI Scripts, and software to compile the survey results, are also described.