Somewhere in the decision-making process, however, people will, each year, have to make a choice between a variety of offers that probably surpasses the range of choices presented to the consumer in any other field. How does he orientate himself and what factors determine his choice? Apart from the need to study this particular decision-making process more in detail in order to assess the relative importance of the various factors like price, climate, general type of vacations wanted, etc. , it can probably be taken for granted that the ideas, expectations, experiences, and prejudices people have about individual countries and nations, types of holiday resorts, carriers, travel organisations, and types of accommodation will play an important part in these considerations.
The position of market research in Germany has been strengthened in the last year and no doubt its efficiency has increased. More and more companies are undertaking long-term systematic research and to an increasing degree market research organisations are being asked to testify before courts of law as expert witnesses. Some organisations stress certain aspects of market research more than others but this does not mean that they specialise. This has led to more intensive trend research and panels in various fields, e.g. tradesmen panel, motor car panel etc.
For years now, something like a cold war has been waged between the protagonists of random sampling and those of quota sampling. In a way, it has been a war between mathematicians and practitioners of survey research.And as things go in such situations, the heat of battle may have blinded both sides to a certain extent, so that they became more and more dogmatic believers in one or the other principle of sampling, thus losing both the will and the ability to try and look at the problem from more than the one and only point of view they had chosen.