The article discusses the Internet is growing rapidly when it comes to marketing research. This is represented by the members of the American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) Council. One-third of the 165 member listed in the CASRO Web site membership have their own Web sites and 86 percent of the members offer Internet-based datacollection. Because the market researchers continually seek data collection methods that are cheap, fast, and unbiased, any analysis of the alternative methods must cover several dimensions. The early researchers suggested three dimensions: validity, reliability, and practicality.

Four methods of collecting survey data are compared and it is revealed that newer methods have significant but not overwhelming advantages over older methods, such as mail. While conventional mail and fax continue to garner slightly higher response rates than e-mail and Web forms, they are of course slower and more expensive. Unlike most earlier studies on this issue, fixed and variable costs of the methods were looked at and an argument was made that for an increasing proportion of the North American population, the cost and convenience advantages of the newer methods can often make up for lower response rates and inaccurate e-mail addresses.