We are delighted to have the opportunity of speaking today in a session devoted to Corporate and Strategic Planning. The existence of such a session reflects the growing importance attached to corporate image, and recognition of the researcher's role in its development process. There is no doubt of either of these two trends. Evidence, including our own, tells us that senior industrialists rate corporate image a major and increasing issue. Corporate communications conferences abound, and the research speaker is an integral part of them. Arguably the most important principle in corporate communications is to identify and understand key audiences. These include customers and the range of opinion leader groups where research is well established. However, a company's own employees have tended to be undervalued as an audience of importance. The most powerful source of knowledge about a company is knowing someone who works there; employee commitment to corporate strategy will affect not only internal efficiency, but also the picture portrayed to the outside world. Companies are often ignorant of their employees' feelings and motivations, and consequently fail to optimise their contribution. Research is good for corporate communications, we contend, and corporate communications is good for research. In the eyes of some companies, market research should keep its servant status and remain "below stairs"; even some market research managers in companies seem to share that view. Corporate communications and planning can put the researcher firmly in the Boardroom, and we regard this as a healthy trend. It is, however, a potentially dangerous one. Unless we can make a positive contribution - which means we must understand the objectives of corporate communications, how they work and how they can effectively be measured - our status will be undermined.
Anyone can sound public opinion. In Athenian Greece it was done with demos, but only a tiny elite had a say; in the 18th Century the Frenchman J. Hector St John de Crevecoeur travelled the American colonies probing the public mood, in the 19th Century the first American poll was taken in 1824 by a newspaper, the "Delaware Watchman", while in Disraeli's England "Tadpole and Tapers" went among the electorate in order to gauge the public mood. Abraham Lincoln said "Public opinion is everything" and Lincoln had a habit of asking strangers seemingly idle questions which were not idle at all but very much like a trial lawyer's cross-examination. He called his meetings with strangers 'public opinion baths'. Each president since Roosevelt, each prime minister since MacMillan, each Chancellor since Adenauer and each President since de Gaulle have had his (or her) pollster.
This section, as in earlier editions, concentrates on marketing research techniques. While the section is aimed principally at practitioners and students of market research, it may also prove useful to the market research user as a guide to the methods by which the answers sought are obtained. The section is written around the time sequence involved in carrying out a market research project. Thus, it starts with defining the problem and gaining the necessary background information before going on to techniques employed to solve marketing problems. An attempt has been made to cover all of the major research techniques now employed perhaps at the sacrifice of depth in the analysis of the use and limitations of each technique examined. Each contributor has attempted to show the purpose of the technique covered in the chapter, its advantages and disadvantages, how it actually operates and, in each case, where to look for further information.
Corporate research encompasses all aspects of research conducted among publics of importance to the corporation, company or organisation in their direct role other than as customers. Consumers are obviously the primary target of marketing research, but there are many other publics of importance to the corporation. Industrial customers, while not included as such in this handbook, are of prime importance to a company selling industrial products. The financial community, including shareholders, are another important audience; financial relations research is covered in the next chapter.
Less than five per cent of attitude research is represented by the opinion polls published in the newspapers and broad- cast on the radio and television. Yet most public attention is focussed on this aspect of the market research industry. Increasingly, major corporations, financial organisations and institutions and public authorities and Governments, as well as newspapers, magazines and television, are commissioning survey research into attitudes held by the public (as opposed to consumers), and also attitudes by specific segments of the public, such as opinion leaders, and elite groups such as parliamentarians, senior civil servants and business leader.
In 1976, Woolworth's management were given a clear indication that a problem existed when MORI presented the findings of a major study they had carried out on the attitudes of Woolworth employees to the company. Although the main objective of the survey was not to probe staff-customer relations, the survey did demonstrate that many sales staff had an unfortunate "them and us" attitude towards customers. In total, MORI interviewed just over 9,000 employees throughout the company, and it became clear that, although there was a considerable amount of loyalty to the company, there was also a certain amount of dissatisfaction.
This paper examines American and British attitude data bases and compares American managers' and employees' attitudes to British managers' and employees' attitudes. Data for these comparisons are derived from: Hay Associates and ORC in the USA, and Market & Opinion Research International (MORI) in Britain.
Open discussion about the "Journalistic developments in the use of opinion polls".
This paper presents the results of a European study which examined the attitudes of the professional and managerial social classes in Belgium, France, Great Britain, The Netherlands and West Germany towards the image of countries and companies identified with them. It indicates the importance of the image of the country of ownership of a company, when that company is trying to sell its goods or services abroad. The results, country by country, were strikingly similar.
The paper describes the objectives of industrial relations research and actions that can stem from their findings, the problem in getting companies (at least in Britain) to undertake industrial relations research studies in the first instance a act on them at the end, and the role of the researcher in these studies. The paper is illustrated by some of the slides used to present the results of a major industrial relations study conducted for the Confederation of British Industry to its General Council.
Measuring change is - or should be - a way of life for researchers the world over. Witness to events, we provide a means by which decision makers in business, politics, government and society in general can assess public opinion and evaluate the effect of change on that opinion. The most effective way to measure change in public knowledge and opinion is by the use of tracking studies. This paper uses four case studies to illustrate how tracking studies can aid decision making in communications generally and advertising specifically. The four case studies are: - "The EEC Referendum Campaign" - "Save Water" - "Simply Years Ahead" - "Ideas in Action". All four series of studies shared the similarity that results were needed to aid decision making for communication tactics, but differed significantly in their execution due to the subject matter and the differing time constraints imposed.