Assessing the size and nature of national, regional and global markets for specific products has become both simpler and more difficult in the past twenty-five years. Compared to earlier large information gaps, many data points are now available. More sophisticated techniques and faster computers improve the marshalling of statistics. After data collection, however, information must still be turned into intelligence; evaluation remains a complex, time-consuming task. There is also built-in bias to issue optimistic projections. Forecasting remains an art, not a science. In this essay, we use both hindsight and foresight. Forecasts were made in 1973 for 1980 - in a global framework, using a composite or consensus method. Did the forecasts come TRUE or not? If off-target, what was the cause and what can be learned? Additionally, using a far more rich database than available in the 1970s, projections from the mid-1990s for 2000 and beyond are presented. Will these projections be more on target? Stay tuned! But based on past record, modesty and humility, not boasting, are in order.
The epic economic and political transformation of Eastern Europe in 1989 has not been accompanied by sudden changes in underlying cultural values or managerial attitudes. As a result, the marketing concept in organizations is in a state of flux. This means that companies are wrestling with identifying their markets and with catering to their old and new customers. Thus, both marketing research and marketing strategy are in the process of evolution. Many studies of Eastern (or: Central) Europe focused on the region and on various macroeconomic forces. A few case studies have appeared discussing and dissecting individual companies. This paper takes a different direction: We look at four Hungarian enterprises in four distinct industrial sectors.
This paper is part of an international study. It discusses the behaviour of purchasing managers and the people they interact with throughout the purchasing process. After a brief description of the methodology used, the first part focuses on the behaviour of French purchasing managers in the paper/chemical industry. It shows that purchasing behaviours vary vastly according to the type of goods acquired, as well as to the importance of the purchasing decision for the firm's operations. The decision power of the purchasing manager varies accordingly. To people who aim at selling raw materials or industrial goods, it means the choice of the right interlocutor in the client company is of great importance. It also means it is not necessarily the best choice to have only one interlocutor in a single firm. The second part of the paper compares French results with previous results obtained in Canada and Hungary Behaviour differences between the three countries are not very great. Yet France is not more similar to either Hungary or Canada on the whole. It largely depends on the type of goods sold.
Significant coverage of the dramatic events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has elevated the interest in doing business in these areas on the part of business people, government officials, and consumers alike. The importance of this activity to both the once controlled economies and the United States can not be overstated. One mechanism for achieving this business activity - joint ventures - is the focus of this article. All aspects of using research to examine U.S. joint venture activity in Hungary is discussed with particular respect to the resultant joint venture being a good mechanism for entering other markets in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, as well as the European Community.
The central thesis of this paper is that a perspective is needed in introducing new products and services in "hot areas" such as high technology. Artificial Intelligence has been around since the mid-1950s, but has remained largely an academic research pursuit. Then in the 1980s, its best-known subfield, expert systems (ES) --more correctly: knowledge-based systems-- came into its own with high expectations. But predicted growth rates of around 60% per annum soon gave way to pessimistic scenarios of small increases in revenue from commercial applications. Neither the optimists nor the pessimists proved to be right. As we enter the 1990s, the market is nearing $200 million/year in the USA
Our analysis looks at costs, benefits, and ways to measure payoffs. Half the firms surveyed take no measurements, but the more astute ones are beginning to measure effectiveness in a number of ways, ranging from simple counts of spectators and participants to more sophisticated measures of attitude change and media spending equivalencies. Continued development of measurements is important, since sponsorships can be expensive, and there is no other way to evaluate the effectiveness of a sponsorship activity in achieving its promotional objectives.
The shift from primary and manufacturing industries to the service sector continues in the industrialized nations of the West. Within the service industries, the emphasis is now on the production and distribution of organised information. The age of knowledge and know-how is here; the "fuel" of modern economies is information, on a commodity or specialty basis. It is imperative for market researchers to consider this trend. The changes taking place in the business environment can be perceived by looking at non-traditional indicators. Two types are identified here, complete with examples, "entities" and "transactions." Both are useful in pinpointing fast-growing segments and genuine opportunities. The changes in the technical environment include the fast rise of microcomputers on the one hand and on-line, electronic data bases on the other. More and more, they will be used in a complementary fashion. The information content of industries, functions, and occupations must be analyzed as well as the speed with which information is delivered to users. Spatial maps are drawn up to identify the characteristics of both information content and information delivery.
Despite the fact that well over 1000 articles appeared on industrial purchasing in the past two decades, relatively little progress has been made toward understanding and predicting buyer behaviour patterns. The key reason for this phenomenon, in our view, is the lack of replication. Most surveys seek to break new ground; as a result, they prove to be one-of-a-kind efforts, not amenable for comparison. A survey of the literature disclosed only one set of related studies (U.S.A., 1950 and 1969; U.K., 1967), but even these were not contrasted with each other.
This paper is an expansion and an updating of a major survey conducted in 1970 by the journal, Scientific American. Entitled How Industry Buys, 1970. That study was designed to measure the influence of ten major groups on the purchasing decision. The study was conducted among the readership of the journal, distributed among 11 major industries, including the chemical industry. The audience consisted of the readership of the journal, with a heavy emphasis on scientific and technical personnel, many of whom worked in large companies.
This paper presents an analysis of the world housing market for the period 1960-1985. Historical and projected data are presented for number of households, conventional homes in place, homes wired for electricity, homes containing piped-in water, housing completions, average floor size per completions, average floor size per completion, and the type of structure. The emphasis is on analysing the general socio-economic environment, housing amenities, and regional differences or similarities.
Benefit Segmentation is a very popular tool in practical market delineation and promotional opportunity studies. This paper reports the results of a managerially oriented benefit segmentation study done in a midwestern United States bank market. Using standard attitudinal importance measures, ordinary cluster analytic methods were used to devise benefit segments. These were cross validated for behavioral market differences and checked for predictive validity by usual linear discriminant procedures. The replication study done two years later revealed several subtle market shifts with interesting promotional and "positioning" implications. Very often extremely profitable, and cost saving, strategies exist which can keep copy constant but shift media vehicles or change copy and continue in the same media vehicles (earning substantial discounts). This paper alerts service organizations to these opportunities and the possible pitfalls of "static" positioning.