The technology of PPMs is complex and still evolving. Although it seems likely that pilot experiments in the field will take place quite soon, the systems could still be changed before they become fully operational and/or alternative new systems may emerge. While at present there seems no cause for serious concern about the implications of introducing PPMs, ESOMAR will continue to monitor the situation. PPMs are of course only one form of research technique involving the observation of people's behaviour. The Committee is also considering whether other observational techniques raise moral or ethical questions which may call for additional forms of supervision and control.
The role of market research is to make marketing operations more efficient and profitable, by improving the quality of planning and decision taking. This is the only way in which market research can justify itself. The following chapters, therefore, illustrate how the research tools described earlier are applied to various problems encountered in marketing.
This chapter looks at a number of the key issues which are encountered in such research. Certain of the issues are peculiar to the international field. Many of the problems are, however, to be found in national or domestic research also, although on the international front they tend to appear on a larger scale and sometimes in a rather different guise.
Unilever is a major user of market research worldwide. Much of this it carries out for itself but it also buys in research from outside agencies. Nearly all the work is locally-commissioned and locally-funded, and there are relatively few multi-country surveys as such. Nevertheless the growing importance of international strategies and brands means that market research approaches and techniques, and the ways in which these are used, need increasingly to be standardised - although there is continuing debate about how far and in what ways this is achievable or even fully desirable. The paper starts by outlining the Unilever structure within which market research operates. It then turns to a number of the issues of policy and practice which arise in attempting to achieve a coordinated approach to carrying out and using research internationally.
In talking here about pre-testing we are not concerned with decisions about budget setting or about the choice of media, or about the various aspects of campaign scheduling. We are dealing exclusively with content, the design of the advertisements as such. The content of advertising is on the whole an under-investigated area. It has over the years generated considerable debate and argument and seen the promotion of many alternative testing systems; but in recent times it has produced relatively little comparative research and objective analysis, still less attempts to validate our methods.
Downham's comment on the paper "The organisation of market research within manufacturing and marketing companies" by G. Rüping.
During the discussion periods the Group was concerned partly with questions and issues arising out of individual papers, partly with more general issues relating to the problems of international research and ESOMAR activities in this connection. These notes concentrate on the latter. There is clearly some difficulties in defining exactly what are the problems and issues which arise in international research and which are peculiar to it. Some of the discussion in the Seminar - and particularly some of the case history material - was to a large extent dealing with points which are equally relevant in national surveys. In following through from this Seminar to other possible ESOMAR activities we ought to focus more closely on specifically international issues. Considerable time was spent during the sessions in discussing the problems of how to organise and coordinate international market research projects.
These comments are naturally coloured by my viewpoint - that of a researcher in a large international company manufacturing and marketing a wide range of (mainly) consumer products. However, I have tried to pick out a number of points which strike me as generally relevant. Even though it is an obvious one, there is an important point worth stressing cat the outset. The market research industry provides a service to marketing organisations. It therefore has to adapt its approach to changes in its clients' needs. In this brief paper there is no scope for discussing trends in marketing during the next decade, but one example will serve.
The project described in this paper, which the British Market Research Bureau is carrying out on behalf of the J. Walter Thompson Company and its clients, is an attempt systematically to collect and interrelate a number of partial measures of the effectiveness of competitive advertising- campaigns. By studying these interrelationships continuously over time we hope to gain a greater insight into the way advertising works in particular product fields, and to provide information helpful in planning advertising strategy. The measures themselves are for the most part not particularly new, but the approach shows sufficient promise to Justify further experimentation. At the moment this paper should therefore be regarded as a progress report on a study which is still evolving. The section which follows discusses-further the nature of the problem confronting us. We then turn to a simplified model of the situation which serves as the basis for the research project, and explain how we expect to apply the research. Finally we describe a little more the mechanics of the operation and examples of the kinds of data which it yields, with a brief note on various problems which are encountered and developments which we foresee.