The purpose of this paper is to give a historical review of food assortment trends, especially in the last fifteen years. The current situation is that the consumer can choose between more and more "new" variants in the different product groups. This makes it more difficult to know if she (or he) is really buying the "right" product. Once she has found the most suitable variant, she discovers that she has to visit a shop other than her "permanent" one to buy it next time.
At present there are in Spain a number of market research organisations with the proper technique and field staff which can accept market research studies of any kind. While in Sweden The association of the eleven leading market research institutes which was founded in 1960 has extended its activities during 1963 and has tried to solve some vital problems in the field of market research.