The rapid development of sample survey research in all countries of Western Europe during the years since the end of World War II has not only given social scientists access to an immense body of new data for an under standing of their own societies, but also provided a basis for comparative cross-national analyses in fields never covered by official and institutional statistics of the traditional types. So far very few social scientists have tried to make use of this new source of information for purposes of comparative analysis across the countries of Western Europe
Purchase periodicity is a problem of simple mathematic, but the remembrance kept by the buyer is a psychological problem in the sense of "uncertain knowledge and fragmentary of human mind facilitating our affinity with other men.
Through the technique of offering the products, the make-up of the tested products, samples and ways of questioning, several types and methods for the product-test can be developed which will be particularly useful with regard to their suitability for specific tasks. In the following, such types and methods for product-tests will be dealt with.
Advertising is one of the means to move products (or services) to the consumer, to make consumers (in all their varieties, including industrial buyers e.g.) buy the goods or services that are being advertised. There are those who say advertising cannot actually sell, They are simply wrong. Mail order advertising (for a large variety of commodities) proves them wrong every day. At the very least advertising helps sell. In trying to sell or to help sell advertising is a means of communication, it is out to link consumers to a product (or a service,. or a particular brand or a particular selling outlet etc). Advertising is closely tied up with the consumer, it tries to influence (the subject) and with the thing it is supposed to sell (the object).
The paper is divide in four parts: the first part is an introduction paragraph. The second is an analysis of the function that management performs in business. The third part is an analysis of the new and developing techniques in the field of market research. The last paragraph is the case of study based on the British motor industry.
Market research for petroleum products obviously concerns the marketing sector of the petroleum industry. The function of the marketing company is, however, largely determined by its place at the end of the chain: exploration - production - refining - transportation - distribution. A few words should, therefore, be said about some of the economic characteristics of the petroleum industry as a whole in so far as they directly affect the marketing company.
I shall not specifically deal with economic forecasts of a general nature, but that I shall put the accent on market forecasts. It may well be reasoned that every market forecast presupposes a forecast of the business situation and of any expected structural changes in the economy, so that in fact both kinds of forecasts are inseparable. The fact is, however, that trends in consumer durable sales do not necessarily reflect the fluctuations in the state of the economy, although influences the price and the types of a product sold can be severely felt. It would, therefore, be necessary for a producer of durable consumer goods to determine the influence of the factors affecting his sales, whether of a specific business cycle nature or not. The relevant information can be obtained from many sources, and the more and the better it is,- and the better the ability to combine them and analyse them, the better the chance that the forecast will be correct. In other words both statistical research at the desk and field studies have to be used to arrive at forecasts that satisfy a company a need. I shall now deal with two methods of forecasting the first one concerns the what may be termed statistical forecast and the second one concerns the forecast based on the consumers intention to buy.
Nowadays, it has become a trivial matter to note that the techniques of market studies have historically their first development. In the search by the industrials for a better profitability of their public expenditure. In the many studies which continue to be carried out in many countries of the world to determine the type of problem in which a technique for the study of markets is being carried out, advertising is still in good rank. The amounts spent by industrial and commercial companies in advertising are such that they can easily support the implementation, often expensive, of techniques likely to greatly increase their efficiency. It is not certain, however, that this close connection of advertising as such and of market research techniques has helped to make it clear to the industrialists that good publicity is impossible outside the systematic study of technology. The distribution process in which it has been developed has essentially helped, and this is not insignificant, to understand that techniques existed which allowed the approach of a problem of advertising with precision, equal (or which tended to become), to that which they required of their services in the approach of a financial, administrative or production problem. These techniques have, most of the time, and put at the service of problems spatially advertised, and have served too rarely to highlight the relationship between an advertising effort and the overall effort of distributing a product.