Melissa Thomas leads the marketing research division at Tronics Inc., a manufacturing company based in Alabama. To improve future sales of the company's products, she has decided to collect customer opinions and feedback on the current products offered by her company. For this purpose, Melissa is looking for a highly flexible contact method which can be used to gather large amounts of data within the least possible time. In this instance, which of the following contact methods is most likely to hold the highest appeal for Melissa?A) online surveysB) in-depth interviewsC) telephone interviewsD) individual interviewsE) mail questionnaires

An online survey refers to a questionnaire that can be completed by the target audience over the Internet. Online surveys are usually created as Web forms with a database to store the answers and statistical software to provide analytics.

Online surveys are generally considered to be a cheap and fast way of getting information about the target audience. They also have a potential for international reach and can be used to gather large amounts of data in a short time.

The merits of online survey include:

Ease of Data Gathering
Minimal Costs
Automation in Data Input and Handling
Increase in Response Rates
Flexibility of Design