Re: Help my 'Hybrid Vehicle Survey'
I wasn't very happy with the questionnaire. First off, you shouldn't have a name field -- generally surveys are meant to be anonymous (for the same reason, if you're going to have a small number of people answering, then you should use age brackets rather than asking for an exact age).
This is also a particularly poor question:
"Hybrid cars have more gas milage than average cars, but cost an averge of $5000 more.
Does the extra cost of the hybrid car outweigh its benefits?"
It's sort of asked a little backwards from what I would expect. Reading it quickly, I was about to hit "yes", then reading it again, I think I realized that that answer would probably be interpreted as saying the costs were too high relative to the benefits -- it would probably be better to have the answer options explicit:
"I believe the extra initial cost of a hybrid is well worth the eventual benefits."
"I believe the extra initial cost outweigh any benefits."
Beyond that, I've got to take issue with your "average of $5000 more" figure. Where did you dig that up? They do cost more, but I think it's at most $5k more, not on average.
For example, the Civic Hybrid is $2.6k more than the Civic EX, and $4.5k more than the LX (the best comparison is probably somewhere between those two), and that's in Canadian dollars. The Camry Hybrid is just about $4k more than the Camry SE (which I think is the proper model to compare it to). The Honda Accord Hybrid is a mere $1.4k more than the Accord V6. The Prius doesn't have another model handy to compare it to, but to pick one for the sake of argument, it's $3.6k more than a base V4 Accord. The Ford Escape Hybrid at least comes close to your figure, at $6100 more (again, in Canadian dollars for the Canadian market -- that's just barely $5000 US). When you average all that out (especially if you weight by the number of units sold!) then it should come out well below $5000, and that's not including tax credits and other incentives... though it's also not counting the potential to reduce a gas-only car's final price further below MSRP than a hybrid.
Perhaps ask instead something about how hybrid cars often come with an initial cost premium, and ask what premium would be acceptable, or similarly, what pay-back period would be acceptable? (though as others have pointed out, while a pay-back period from gas savings is nice, cars are always expenses, i.e.: no other option has a pay-back...)
Edit: Sorry for harshing out a bit on some of the anonymity stuff, we were just reviewing some human ethics stuff over here at the university so that stuff's at the top of my mind -- I'm sure it's not as important for your market research class.
Last edited by Potato; 03-15-2007 at 11:59 PM.
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Re: Help my 'Hybrid Vehicle Survey'
