The application of opinion research for controlling results of advertising and for decision making of planning and realising advertising campaigns in the insurance market is shown by a case study.
In June 1976 Philip Morris Europe mounted an extensive programme of product testing in an important European cigarette market for a new filter brand called "Merit". The Company intended to make use of the test results in Its launch advertising, this approach having worked extremely well in the brand's home market, the U.S.A. Thus the product preference results against competitive brands had to be impressive, but also the test itself had to be technically and legally irreproachable in case a competitor attacked the advertising in court. For this reason, the process by which cigarettes are usually "blinded" for testing was abandoned, and both Merit and leading competitive cigarettes were tested "open". Merit's performance was disappointing, due primarily, it was suspected, to existing competitive brand images biasing the results. The product was re-checked in a "blind" test and performed significantly better against the same competitors. A decision was taken to launch Merit early in 1977 and at the time of writing the cigarette appears to be a success. The contrasting test results offer convincing proof of the strength of brand image conditioning in this product category.
The paper argues that this research, as well as providing a necessary check on the Board's marketing performance, should provide useful guidance to the creation of future marketing. In order to assess the extent to which such research has proved so useful, two cases of evaluation research are discussed, each concerned with a regular piece of marketing literature - a tourist accommodation guide ("where to stay") and a main holiday brochure ("English holidays"). In each case, the paper restates the action recommendations given to marketing management in the original survey report, and describes what, if anything, happened as a result of these recommendations. From these, and similar assessments not detailed in the paper, it was found that just over a half of research department's recommendations were taken up.
This paper presents the synthesis of the work carried out by CEO and SOFRES with the aim oh studying in greater depth the behavior and attitudes of the public as regards collaboration on panels of limited duration. Two types of approaches are presented: a quantitative approach and the second approach, more qualitative.
This paper presents the synthesis of the work carried out by CEO and SOFRES with the aim oh studying in greater depth the behavior and attitudes of the public as regards collaboration on panels of limited duration. Two types of approaches are presented: a quantitative approach and the second approach, more qualitative.