This paper discusses some factors involved in a communication gap between clients and creatives in the development of advertising. It is almost a truism to say that communicating even within the communication industry is more complex these days. One factor in the gap between the client and the creator of advertisements is inadequate briefing. We shall argue that it is the researcher's responsibility to provide a meaningful frame of reference, provide only enough detail to support his points, and to establish his credibility as a researcher.
This paper is based on one method of prediction: namely scenarios derived from indirect inference of survey results. Scenarios are a useful perspective within which the complex inter-relationships between the environment, individual business goals, objectives and feasible strategy options can be seen and understood by management. A useful scenario allows one to integrate "soft", social trends into decision making and to reconcile them with the "hard", economic factors. Behind much of the scenario development is the basic idea that what determines a society's characteristics are individual's values and concerns. These are often the motor force behind social change. The refraction and distillation by which changing values and concerns are translated into social change are still very imperfectly understood. But this paper takes one particular phenomenon, namely, the changing attitudes to the family and relates it over the last decade to individual attitude statements from survey research. The relationship between attitude questions related to having children, sexual roles, female careerism on the one hand, and social value shifts on the other are explored with a view to gaining insight into the dynamics of social change.
The operating environment for many businesses is increasingly affected by social and political pressures, in addition to economic and technological ones. The need for systematic planning is generally accepted by business, but until recently it covered only the economic and technological aspects of its environment - social and political trends were taken into account only implicitly. There is nothing new in saying that societal dimensions are relevant. What is new is the attempt to develop planning procedures in which the more qualitative social aspects are explicitly considered. The development of multiple scenarios has provided such a mechanism. Each of the scenarios must be internally consistent, but discontinuities can be built in to them, so that "the future" need not reflect the past to any great degree. In addition, these scenarios provide the basis for scanning and monitoring the business environment. This paper describes two scenarios : a "hard times" for the United Kingdom; and "hard times" for the United States. The presentations of each are quite different, and illustrate the variety of ways in which scenarios can be developed. The final section of the paper provides a brief description of the development and use of scenarios.
The programme of research described here is ambitious. Not many products have the benefit of so high an expenditure on research. What emerges is the complexity of the consumers choice. Admittedly the decision involved is a conscious and considered one, but it is likely that more trivial purchases, when as carefully dissected, are as labyrinthine. The paper can be read as an essay on consumer decision-making as much as an evaluation of a campaign.
This paper covers the role of the survey researcher as a social forecaster. Social indicators have been derived from a qualitative and quantitative survey research system now operating in 14 different countries. These indicators include self fulfilment in work, social pluralism, desire for a better life, alienation from business, alienation from government. There is a movement to a more conservative stable society with a growing resistance to government control in education, housing and health. We argue that the social surveyor should be prepared to make predictions and to give views on public policy making. The social surveyor often has access to broadly based studies and his data can complement that of other social scientists.
The paper describes one approach used by several banking and insurance companies in the launching of profitable new financial products. Despite extensive research over the past decade, a number of unresolved questions in the banking and insurance fields are now demanding answers. Is behaviour in the banking and insurance markets dependent upon consumers life cycle or are permanent social changes taking place? How does one overcome the apathy which appears to exist in banking and insurance where once a year or once a life time decisions are made? The authors argue for an integrated research programme including: - Assessment of current changes in attitudes to savings and borrowing - The development of concepts within major platforms; concept research which provides financial products which are perceived as new by consumers.
This paper describes the research programme carried out on the U.K. domestic energy conservation programme from summer 1974 up to 1976. On the basis of ad hoc attitude surveys, depth research, re-interviews, consumer panels and surveys of the retail trade. We have monitored movements in a number of relevant 'intermediate indicators' of successful energy saving.
This paper analyses some of the main ways in which Burnett Life Style Research and Taylor Nelson Social Trends Research can be used to throw light on the nature of media audiences. This is done from a standpoint of providing insight into how media may need to change their strategy in order to maintain or gain a hold on key sub-groups, particularly the young. There is a discussion of the correlations that have been found by other investigators between psycho-graphic and related variables, and media exposure. An explanation is given of how Life Style and Social Trend analyses - both straightforward cross-tabulations, and some multivariate work (by A.I.D.) - bear on the problems of the future of media. Media exposure sub-groups are isolated, and contrasted in psychographic terms. The implications of these data for their varying needs and relationships with media are discussed.
TNA has been investigating social trends as they affect consumer behaviour. Five groups of trends have been covered and the fifth group of trends, namely Consumerism, which is discussed in detail in this paper. The paper discusses studies of consumerism carried out in the U.S.A. Some background to the development of consumer trends in the U.K. is discussed. In the Monitor pilot several independent factors including consumer scepticism and concern about environment have emerged. Consumerism is not one factor.
The relationship of attitudes to behaviour remains a problematic area for social psychology and commercial research. This paper reports on a recent model of their relationship proposed by Professor Martin Fishbein of Illinois, which seems particularly suggestive for commercial research purposes. After a brief discussion of the Fishbein theory of attitude construction and measurement, a case study is presented which shows the value of the attitude measurements proposed for commercial research. The Fishboin theory of the relationship of attitudes to behaviour is then discussed and some evidence from case study is presented to show how the theory can be operationalised in the commercial field. The Fishbein 'method offers a means not only for discovering what are the consumer's clusters of beliefs, norms, attitudes about the product but also of understanding the structure of norms and attitudes and their relative importance in controlling behavioural intentions and behaviour.