The main body of the paper is concerned with the research programme that was mounted in relation to the £2½ million campaign, 'Britain at its Best', which can be regarded as one of the most successful corporate-image advertising campaigns ever undertaken in Britain. The design of the research programme and the results observed are discussed in relation to the answers to three questions: Is it likely to work? What effect has it had? What are the implications for the future?. The final part of the paper returns to the conference theme of 'Research for Profitability' and outlines five major ways in which BP has profited significantly from this research programme.
Product testing has been a relatively neglected area in the literature of market research. This paper reviews current thinking and practice, discusses some major methodological issues and indicates some areas for further investigation. The first section looks at the basic assumptions of product testing methodology, including the nature of the respondent's task and the relationship between discrimination and preference. The second section uses the product life cycle analogy in considering the varied roles of product testing in the decision processes of marketing. Finally, the paper discusses a number of problem areas in product testing, presenting evidence for certain preferred methods and, in other cases, demonstrating the need to relate technique to marketing problem or product field.