Recruiting and Maintaining a Consumer Panel

Abstract

This article summarizes the effort involved in recruiting and maintaining a consumer panel. The panel was recruited from a population cross-section for the purpose of studying meat, fish, and poultry demand relationships. The results of several variations in recruiting this panel—a one-interview versus a two-interview approach, reworking of families not initially available for an interview versus adding new families to the sample, and use of a call-back after the first week of panel membership versus omission of the call-back—are also evaluated. As expected, a sizable effort, measured in terms of attempted and actual contacts, was involved in recruiting and maintaining the panel. A one-interview approach used in conjunction with a pre-interview letter but without a call-back yielded the most panel members for a given recruiting effort.