The attention of the media researcher is not unnaturally concentrated on the two main advertising media. Relatively little attention is given in the UK to the cinema, radio and posters as subjects for audience research, and the reasons are not hard to find. In UK advertising expenditure terms they are minor media
This paper reviews the cases for optimism and pessimism about the future of Market Research presented in the brief for the 1979 ESOMAR Congress and concludes that the industry has good grounds for confidence in its own future. However, the paper draws attention to the need for researchers to take advantage of their skills and strengths in a wide range of issues which far transcend the marketing function. The very strength of the industry, rooted in the marketing area, could be a source of future problems if the researcher is not positioned in the eyes of business and government leaders as the supplier of information on a wide range of issues concerning social responsibility, corporate strategy, employee and community relations as well as marketing.
In all countries Governments have become major sponsors of survey research. As an information tool the social survey designed to discover the facts in some area of government activity is now commonplace and increasingly surveys of opinion play a part in this government information service. In Britain the Government Social Survey have played an important part in keeping government informed; survey research is then an established part of the government information service. In what ways does this type of information contribute to government policy? Any attempt to answer that question must necessarily be tentative because it is almost impossible to categorically relate decisions to specific inputs and in any event government policy itself is a manifold thing. Some aspects of it being more susceptible to influence by survey research than others. Furthermore, given the vast range of government activity it is impossible to be familiar with all aspects. This paper must therefore be impressionistic.
With European Conservation year not long over and with a revitalised interest on the part of administrators, planners and journalists in the environment it is rewarding to review the survey research that has been done in one area that is so closely related to environment, that is recreation and leisure. Besides this we shall be considering the evaluation of available leisure time, in simple quantitative and in more complex economic terms, because such evaluation seems necessary to provide our administrators with more and better data upon which to make decisions, particularly in view of the apparent expansion in leisure activities and recent increase in time available over the last decades in Europe. As an aside, we should like to hear in mind the developing nations in this discussion for most of them are also faced with changes in leisure time and patterns of leisure activity as part of the changing face of their society, and in certain ways these charges are probably more profound in these countries. The concepts and arguments discussed in this paper are adaptable to situations outside Western Europe and North America. Though we shall discuss several leisure and recreation surveys the discussion will centre on the national survey of angling which was recently published and which was the first major national demand study of a specific recreational activity in Britain.