The RATP, a public service and autonomous enterprise, has always been concerned with "customer satisfaction". A consensus of usage has been created around this term by the RATP and the authorities to which it is responsible: who would not want to satisfy the customers ? This desire to satisfy its customers forms part of a general philosophy of the enterprise where it was both seen and saw itself as a servant of those citizens who were not in a position to use private vehicles on a regular basis. Such customer satisfaction was seen as a particularly vague and not very explicit concept: as such it was not likely to justify the taking of very detailed decisions. Whilst good sense and a strict observing of transport conditions had allowed a simple approach to the efforts to be made by the enterprise, in the sense that the necessary priorities could be clearly seen whilst the assumed dissatisfactions of the users confirmed the difficulties of the enterprise, this concept could be used without posing any major problems. This conceptual vagueness was useful for those inside and outside the enterprise who shared the same vision of things, a vision which we could term administrative.
The RATP, a public service and autonomous enterprise, has always been concerned with "customer satisfaction". A consensus of usage has been created around this term by the RATP and the authorities to which it is responsible: who would not want to satisfy the customers ? This desire to satisfy its customers forms part of a general philosophy of the enterprise where it was both seen and saw itself as a servant of those citizens who were not in a position to use private vehicles on a regular basis. Such customer satisfaction was seen as a particularly vague and not very explicit concept: as such it was not likely to justify the taking of very detailed decisions. Whilst good sense and a strict observing of transport conditions had allowed a simple approach to the efforts to be made by the enterprise, in the sense that the necessary priorities could be clearly seen whilst the assumed dissatisfactions of the users confirmed the difficulties of the enterprise, this concept could be used without posing any major problems. This conceptual vagueness was useful for those inside and outside the enterprise who shared the same vision of things, a vision which we could term administrative.
The purpose of this communication is to expose the basic principles of causal modelling, and to examine its conditions of application to marketing research. It will be showed that these models are part of a "second generation" of multivariate analysis. The switch from an exploratory approach to a confirmatory one contributes to fill the gap, and reinforce the links, between data analysis and model building.
The purpose of this communication is to expose the basic principles of causal modelling, and to examine its conditions of application to marketing research. It will be showed that these models are part of a "second generation" of multivariate analysis. The switch from an exploratory approach to a confirmatory one contributes to fill the gap, and reinforce the links, between data analysis and model building.
The purpose of this communications is to review the main applications of multivariate methods to a preeminent area of marketing research consumer behavior. Three areas of application are distinguished, based on a paradigm of consumer behavioral system: 1. market segmentation; 2. consumer perceptions and product positioning; 3. preferences and choices. For each area, available methods are briefly presented in a comparative framework. The conclusive part aims to identify the main trends of evolution of multivariate data analysis.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate conceptual and methodological problems raised by research on consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction (C S/D) and to review its areas of application.
One of the most important trends in the area of marketing research during the seventies is the considerable increase of the use of multivariate methods of data analysis. After being used as a complement to the usual techniques of classification, multivariate analysis is becoming more integrated into the research process. This integration reinforces the interactions between data collection and data analysis which it is the purpose of this communication to analyze.
The purpose of this communication is to analyse the role and the function of statistical methods in the development of Marketing Information Systems. This analysis will be conducted at two main levels: 1. Integration of the bank of statistical methods in the system; 2. Storage of reduced data.
Most of the previous studies of media are based on reading habits of the audience. The similarity between two magazines is then defined in terms of the audience duplication. A major limitation of this approach is that it confuses the concepts of competition and of complementarity. Further understanding of the qualitative aspects underlying the perception of magazines by consumers is therefore needed both for advertisers as well as for the magazines themselves. The various methods of multidimensional scaling of similarities and preferences whose applications in marketing until now was mainly in the field of strategy, especially of product policy, supply us with the methodological basis to conduct this research. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a new research approach to this problem, based on a pilot study on a limited sample, which could be extended to a larger one.
The object of the present paper is to conduct an overview of the main problems associated with the use of multidimensional scaling analysis in marketing, in order to: 1. Recognise their essential dimensions; 2. Present an account of the elements of resolution currently available and; 3. Submit several suggestions that may lead to a better understanding of these problems. The idea of this paper arose from the observation of a surprising contrast between, on the one hand, the present success achieved by these methods in marketing and, on the other hand, the existence of a number of basic problems, not yet resolved, that are implicitly or explicitly present in their implementation and application. In this paper the emphasis is thus deliberately put on the problems raised by these methods at the point of their utilisation rather than that of their development or their technical features.