Quantitative analyses of depth interviews

Prior research has relied on qualitative analyses of customers' responses during depth interviews. This article discusses how observational monitoring, subjective encoding, and automatic encoding can be used to quantitatively analyze depth interview data. It compares the benefits and costs of each method, and discusses computer software packages that assist in automatically encoding verbal data. In an innovative experiment, we compared observational monitoring and automatic encoding of customers' responses to open‐ended questions about telecommunication services. We conclude that automatic encoding is a feasible method of analyzing depth interviews that provides detailed quantitative information about customers' responses.