The quality of interviewing tends to be higher with continuous surveys, since the same interviewer works on the project day after day. Continuous tracking smoothes the effects of short-term disturbances, such as adverse publicity, new product introductions, or inclement weather. Pulsed tracking can be strongly biased if some negative event occurs just as a wave of interviewing is conducted. Continuous tracking is also a better monitor of competitive information, since the interviewing is ongoing and not biased to the media schedule of one brand. Therefore, it is possible to develop a model for a specific brand that explains the relationship among media expenditures, tracking variables and marketshare.
Pulsed tracking does have some advantages.
Pulsed tracking allows waves of interviewing to be precisely times to coincide with media schedules. Comparison of the Collected Data Regardless of whether one chooses to use continuous or pulsed interviewing, several guidelines should be followed to ensure that the tracking data is comparable from time period to time period. Maintain Constant Methods. The questionnaire, the sample destination, the training if interviewers, and the editing, coding, and tabulation procedures must all remain constant from time period to time period. Any change in methods is very likely to cause perturbations in the survey results, and destroy the comparability of data between different time periods.