The purpose of the paper is, on a general level, to study the impact of information technology on marketing activities, which is to a great extent relized through marketing research. The examples that are presented focus on the more detailed and practical aspects of information technology usage in marketing.
The objective of this paper is to examine the character of market research in the CMEA countries by comparing it with those of the western market economy and Arab countries. The leading idea for the examination is that the planning system of a country has a distinct influence upon import decision making and through this on the character of market research used. In this paper the character of market research is described by means of the main types of research, information sources and information types.
The purpose of our paper is to evaluate the application potential of experimental research, especially experimental field research, from the viewpoint of marketing decision making. On the one hand we try to demonstrate extensively some general and feasible application issues. On the other hand, to illustrate the possibilities and problems of experimental research, we utilize as a case an experimental field study done in Finland. We classify the area of experimental research and point out some critical features as well as exemplary characterisations of field experiments, especially concerning organisations as experimental units. After presenting some possible experimental targets we go through the process of experimental reach pointing out both positive and negative aspects of our case study. In chapter 3 we illustrate by our case study the nature of experimental results and how the results can be exploited. Finally, we shortly evaluate experimental field study on the basis of the case study and characterize the future of experimental field study. The objective of this paper is to show in rather detailed manner the efficiency and practicability but also weaknesses of experimental field research.
The shopping habits of Finnish households were studied for the first time extensively in 1975. Since then there have been changes in the structure of the retail trade, and the consumers' social and economic environment has also changed in many respects. To examine the changes in shopping habits this study was carried out again, the main objective being to survey the shopping habits in autumn 1980 and to compare the results with those of the former study as well as the changes in the social, economic and commercial environment. This paper is based on the material collected in these studies. Here, however, we concentrate on those aspects of consumer shopping habits which mainly illustrate the status of consumers in the distribution system measured by their distribution work load. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the consumers' work load in the distribution system and the changes in this work load.
There is wide agreement that organisational decisions (e.g. industrial buying decisions) usually involve multiple participants. Researchers also believe that the organisational decision process is normally very complex, it is difficult to model, and it is even more difficult to validate empirically. Therefore, relatively little is known about this utmostly important phenomenon. It seems rather natural to make efforts to explain organisational decision making by using expectancy-value models as a starting point. At least these models have functioned reasonably well at the individual level and they are relatively measurable. Therefore, we have developed some organisational versions of expectancy-value models, which will be presented in this paper. Then we will shortly comment these models in conceptual and empirical respect. So we will be ready to discuss application potential of organisational decision making models later.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the economic planning system on the import decision making of a country and through this on the problems, possibilities and methods of marketing research. From the point of view of practical export marketing research these problems, possibilities and methods are to a great extent reflected by the importance of the different information types and the use of the different information sources. Within these problem areas the examination is concentrated upon the contrast which may be the most controversial, namely differences between capitalistic countries and socialistic countries. Though the analysis is in nature comparative, the emphasis of this paper is upon the questions concerning the CMEA countries, because the western marketing researchers and marketers are less familiar with these than the questions concerning western market economy countries.