1. Why do organizations use telemarketing? Or why do consumers buy the products or services promoted by telephone solicitations?
2. Could organizations use some other form of promotion more successfully?

Students in college dormitories may not be as vulnerable to telephone solicitations as families living in their own homes, but students probably have experienced telephone solicitations.

Telephone solicitations, including technological advances such as computerized telephone dialing, have increased. To determine how you react to telemarketing, listen to this list and see which of these aspects you dislike. Number a sheet of paper from one to ten. Place a check-mark beside each number of the statement for which you have a dislike. If the activity mentioned does not bother you, leave a blank after the number.

1. Calls come at the busiest time in a family’s life—mealtime.
2. Sales personnel are often crude and pushy and do not take “no” for an answer.
3. Sales personnel ask personal questions.
4. Sales personnel call you by your first name as if they have known you for years.
5. Some callers enlist your participation in a “very short survey,” and the survey turns out to last 20 minutes.
6. The so-called scientific survey by a national rating service turns out to be a local and amateurish survey for Joe’s Bar and Grill.
7. Some callers are very clearly reading a canned pitch.
8. The caller is a machine.
9. The salesperson definitely insults your intelligence with a stupid question like: “Which hand is the Statue of Liberty holding up?”
10. The salesperson wastes your time with chat about the weather as a way to lead into the sales message.

Take an informal poll to find approximately how many of the statements about telephone solicitations were disliked by students. Most likely, many of the students resent telephone solicitations. Because so many firms are using telemarketing, there must be profit in its use.