Online interviews are essentially online IDI’s or Focus groups. The advantages and applications are the same. However, an additional benefit is that you are able to draw on a much wider geographical area making this an excellent tool for “hard-to-reach” respondent groups.
This research approach is still in it’s relatively early stages, there are still some issues around how representative a sample it is able to provide. We currently only suggest this approach where we feel it is able to meet the research needs. We anticipate that it’s use will grow quickly with young respondents and of course in more developed countries.