Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-207) and index.

Introduction -- Focus of this book -- Background -- Developments since the first and second editions -- Who should read this book -- Acknowledgments -- Rationale -- Why visit customers? -- Customer visits and market focus -- Promise and peril of customer visits -- Additional information -- Customer visits as a distinctive approach to market research -- Why do market research at all? -- Why do market research via personal visits? -- Why visits by cross-functional teams? -- Additional benefits of team visits -- Additional information -- Limits, boundary cases, and the sweet spot for customer visits -- When customer visits are not the technique of choice -- The sweet spot for customer visits -- Boundary cases -- From conceptual rationale to practical advice -- Additional information -- Procedures -- Programmatic, ad hoc, and hybrid approaches to visiting customers -- Ad hoc visits -- Hybrid and emerging visit types -- How to harvest data from ad hoc visits -- Planning a program of visits -- Why a program of visits? -- Appropriate and inappropriate applications for visit programs -- A seven-step procedure for planning customer visit programs -- Additional information -- Budgets, recruitment, coordination, team preparation, and time line -- Cost factors -- Recruit customers -- Coordination with the salesforce -- Select team members -- Time frame -- Additional information -- Selecting customers to visit -- Devising a sample frame -- Special cases in sample selection -- Additional information -- Preparing a discussion guide -- The goal: information capture -- Discussion guide -- A process for team preparation of a discussion guide -- Additional information -- Constructing good questions -- Preparation but also spontaneity -- Importance of open-ended questions -- Workhorse questions -- Specialized question strategies -- Criteria for effective and ineffective questions -- Two specific questions to avoid -- How to ask questions about pricing -- The importance of follow-up questions -- Additional information -- Conducting the visits -- Interview format: time boundaries -- Interview format: spatial considerations -- Group versus individual interviews -- Interview roles -- Interview skills -- Five difficult interview situations -- Additional information -- Completing the visit program -- Debriefing -- Analysis and reporting -- Dissemination of results -- Storage of results -- Closure for customers and the field -- Additional information -- Analysis -- Generalizability of visit data -- Procedures for the analysis of visit data -- Process of analysis: baseline approach -- Analysis of visit data: a closer look -- Visual representation of visit data -- Tips for improving the analysis of visit data -- Additional information -- The place of customer visits within the market research toolbox -- Compartments in the market research toolbox -- Research planning -- Customer visits compared to kindred techniques -- Combination strategies involving customer visits -- Two mistakes to avoid -- Summary -- Additional information -- Appendix: checklist for conducting a program of customer visits -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the author.