This paper illustrates some of the ways in which sample survey data can be used to make predictions about aspects of society. It examines the use of data from continuous surveys to make short term predictions based on time series and the use of surveys to assess the effect of changes in Government policy. The paper then examines some examples of surveys that have collected data about peoples intentions. It concludes that such information has only limited use for short term prediction but may have greater potential for looking further ahead.
According to Kotler planning means "to decide at the present time what needs to be done in the future." Marketing planning forms part of the overall planning of an enterprise. The marketing-mix being a combination of various kinds of marketing activities, such as product design, sales system, price strategy, advertising, and selling efforts. The application of the individual instruments of the marketing-mix package necessitates future oriented decisions. The glimpse of the future cannot be achieved merely by looking at past processes and results extrapolating these into the future. The thinking in 'feed back' terms will have to be replaced by a 'feed forward' orientation. This is characterised by forecasts or by short and medium-term prognostics. Long-term studies and their results constitute a way to projecting future developments into the present.
This paper is based on one method of prediction: namely scenarios derived from indirect inference of survey results. Scenarios are a useful perspective within which the complex inter-relationships between the environment, individual business goals, objectives and feasible strategy options can be seen and understood by management. A useful scenario allows one to integrate "soft", social trends into decision making and to reconcile them with the "hard", economic factors. Behind much of the scenario development is the basic idea that what determines a society's characteristics are individual's values and concerns. These are often the motor force behind social change. The refraction and distillation by which changing values and concerns are translated into social change are still very imperfectly understood. But this paper takes one particular phenomenon, namely, the changing attitudes to the family and relates it over the last decade to individual attitude statements from survey research. The relationship between attitude questions related to having children, sexual roles, female careerism on the one hand, and social value shifts on the other are explored with a view to gaining insight into the dynamics of social change.
The research, which was carried out in different phases (qualitative/quantitative) and with a sophisticated methodology on a final sample of 3000 women, clearly highlighted the greatest variability of the universe of Italian women. A particularly distinct clusters analysis emerged which allowed the segmentation of the Female World into 6 Groups characterised according to the attitude towards the role of women in the Italian society today. The research clearly shows how consistently women's attitudes and behaviours vary as the fundamental attitude towards the woman's role changes with regard to a wide range of areas concerning the everyday life (the family, the children, the work, religion, sex, political involvement, consumption behaviour and exposure to media). In consideration of the size of the areas studied and of the greatest articulation focused on the Italian women's reality, a number of qualitative hypotheses of evolutive prediction have been drawn from this paper.
Here in Amsterdam, were prediction is the main theme, the possibilities and the limits of forecasting have been presented in relation to changes in social values, with specific emphasis on the ways and means in which policy makers can use the range of our techniques. Relevant cases were related to such topics as market planning, future research and scenarios, political preference and consumers' expectations, women's attitudes and role changes, and some counter-marketing in the area of smoking and drinking habits. An innovation in the range of subjects was traffic and transportation, with five papers on specific aspects of the general theme.
I wish to discuss the way in which we in Amsterdam brought about a peaceful coexistence of information and policymaking. It may strike you that the essence of my arguments will be information and not research. The problems touch a much wider area than just research, and only much later in my talk can some specific research related cases be discussed.
All over the world is different from other industrial sectors; there are incomparably more difficulties to surpass: production takes place (in most cases) in the open air. Unexpected factors like weather and soil conditions have an enormous influence. Each building is different from others, there are no trial runs. Trade cycles have reinforced effects on construction, simply because household primarily have to cover fixed costs and will only then assess expenses for construction if some flexibility in financing is left.
The Austrian Labour Market Administration (which is part of the Ministry for Social Affairs) is legally obliged to procure an annual prediction of the manpower demand and supply for the following year. This Labour Market Forecast is dis- cussed in the Labour Market Board (Arbeitsmarkt-Beirat) of the Department for Social Affairs - the government program is founded on this report.
There has been considerable interest, in recent years, in assessing the environmental effects of traffic. The purpose has been either to predict the impact of now roads and traffic management schemes or to identify those locations in most need of relief from undesirable traffic effects. It was thought important to know the actual levels of nuisance which particular traffic flows caused, the factors which caused nuisance and also the changes in people's opinions of nuisance when a change in the amount of traffic occurred. This interest was reflected in the attention the 'Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment' paid to the assessment of environmental factors as an essential element in the appraisal of trunk road schemes. New roads may increasingly be built for environmental rattier than traffic benefits so it has become more important to assess the environmental impact.
Consumption patterns and motivations are constantly changing with the complex developments in society as a whole. In the present study recent trends in the consumption of tobacco and alcohol are analysed. Data from surveys measuring use and non- use of tobacco and alcohol in Norway in 1979 and 1981 are used for describing changes in the patterns of consumption. Through bi- and multivariate analyses relationships between a set of demographic variables and use of the stimulants are assessed. An evaluation of the changes in the demographic structure of users and non-users is used for analysing possible future trends in the consumption.
This paper describes how the response of consumers to change may be predicted using techniques which integrate survey design and implementation with in-depth statistical analysis and modelling. The consumers may be personal consumers, or businesses; the range of choices which may be considered include the introduction of new products or choices, modification of the characteristics of existing products, or changes in external circumstances, such as levels of economic activity. The techniques are illustrated by two widely differing examples.
The remainder of this paper is concerned with describing briefly a number of exercises in which research technologies have been utilised in combination to assist in predicting consumer behaviour. Most, but not all are related to investment decisions. Where papers or results have been published references are given in the bibliography but it is, of course, characteristic of same of the studies that they are of transient interest or that there are political or commercial reasons for not disclosing their content.