Different from traditional telephone interview, CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews) is a method to conduct interviews with the assistance of computer and program.

CATI is suitable for questionnaire survey with a few questions and simple content. Due to the difficulty of obtaining the cooperation of respondents, it is usually impossible to ask more complex content. The LOI of CATI had better be within 10 minutes, no longer than 15 minutes, and the open-ends should be no more than three ones.

The advantages of CATI are as follows:

1. Although sometimes the telephone cost is much, compared with face to face interview, the total cost is relatively low because CATI can save transportation, accommodation and other travel costs.

2. CATI can be directly conducted immediately after the phone is connected, which takes the least time. More interviews can be completed in a limited time, and surveys can be returned quickly.

3. China's telephone penetration rate is high. With the help of random dialing system and enterprise Yellow Pages, samples can be widely collected.

4. CATI can completely avoid mistakes caused by skipping the answer route. Singular values can be checked in time, which effectively improve the accuracy of data.

The disadvantages of CATI are as follows:

1. The LOI of CATI is short and can’t be as long as the F2F interview, otherwise the respondents will be impatient or even hang up. Due to the short interview length, it is not easy for the interviewers to record the interview contents in detail in the limited interview time, so the opinions obtained are relatively limited, which can’t be as detailed as F2F interview or mail interview.

2. Physical products can only be described, but can’t be displayed, such as taste and touch, and it is not easy to describe. Therefore, it is not suitable to use CATI for some market research that must have auxiliary instructions of packaging, or products.

3. The sample population is incomplete, and the sampling is easy to lose representativeness.

CBC is one of the first market research companies to use CATI in China, and has accumulated more than 20 years of CATI experience so far. Now CBC has three CATI centers located in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. CBC has served many international well-known clients, such as Ford, Mazda, Caterpillar, John Deere, Yum Group, etc., and conducted lots of typical CATI projects like satisfaction research and brand tracking research.