The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current position in consumer attitude research, with particular reference to the attitude-behaviour controversy. This is a formidable objective for a thirty minute paper, given the wide range of issues involved. Consequently there has been a high degree of selectivity in the choice of issues to be discussed, and some of these are dealt with rather briefly.
In order to formulate an advertising strategy two requisites have to be present: firstly a way of reasoning taking into account all pertinent elements in an orderly fashion and secondly the proper information to fee this scheme so that it develops on a basis of facts and figures and not on thin air. We shall call the first requisite a methodology. It is above all a way of reasoning. We shall call the second a store of data (qualitative for the most part). It is obtained through research. The first object of this paper is to show that this store of necessary data must not be constructed in the light of present research techniques or of what the researcher thinks will be useful later. It must be constructed in the light of the needs of the advertising man when he constructs his advertising strategy in an orderly way.
The particular survey into sexuality in Holland was co-ordinated by the market and opinion research department of the publishing house concerned. An advisory committee was formed consisting of the Attwoods Netherlands team charged with the conduct of the research and of quite a number of acknowledged experts from the fields of social science, sexology, gynaecology, and statistical analysis. Considerable help was also obtained from the Dutch Institute for social sexological research and from the Department of Applied Psychology of the University of Nijmegen. A major part of the psychological pilot test was carried out by the Netherlands Institute for Psychological Market Research. The research approach also took account of related work carried out abroad and of a detailed appraisal of published work. It goes without saying that it was impractical in one survey to cover the whole field of sexual problems or to study particular aspects in great depth. The survey should therefore be regarded as basic fact-finding; and the collected data related both to attitudes to sex and to sexual behaviour patterns.
My own paper emphasised the need for us to take a closer look on the standards at which much exploratory qualitative work was conducted; my own view remains that if we are honest with ourselves there must be scope for improvement here.
This paper describes a comprehensive TV audience reaction service which has recently been initiated on a pilot basis for Independent Television in the U.K. The service as a whole has been designed as a flexible research instrument, capable of providing a variety of measurements and indications of all the ways in which the TV audience is reacting towards, and thinking about, the programme transmitted on the three different channels - BBC 1, BBC 2 and ITV - at present available. The primary emphasis of this paper is, however, on those parts of the service which provide measures of audience evaluation of programmes: that is to say, diagnostic measures indicating the ways in which programmes are judged, thought about and compared, in addition to simple measures of appreciation (i.e. enjoyment or involvement) . The paper is presented from the point of view of the user, rather than the practitioner of research, and is therefore more concerned with the applications of the service than with the technical details of its structure and operation. The techniques used, however, are particularly suited to the problems of TV audience research and a general description of them is necessary in order fully to understand their practical applications.
Attitude is attitude, and motivation is motivation; and never the twain shall meet. This is the feeling one is left with after this seminar on Attitude and Motivation Research. In short, attitude and motivation researchers seem to me to be likely to have, respectively, different roles, acted out in unlike situations. and with tendencies also to be of a different personality type in order to have gravitated to their different occupations in the first place.
In this session, we are concerned to consider the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative work. In theory, I am sure we would all agree that these two forms of work are not by any means mutually exclusive, but are complementary. I certainly hold that view. However, there is much room for discussion as to the relative contribution each kind of approach may make. It is here we may disagree. My own view - and I speak as one, admittedly, who specialises in qualitative work - is clear; it is, that quantitative methods are entirely inadequate of themselves, and that without the qualitative approach, most market research is sterile, if not misleading. In order to sustain this point of view, I want to spend a little time in reviewing with you, first the nature of market research, and next something of the nature of scientific work in general, and of social science in particular with which market research has much affinity. I shall then return to make what I regard as the proper evaluation of the qualitative approach.
I am in the happy position, as discussant, of disagreeing with everything that the speaker has said. My own view of market research, science and most activities is that they contain "ideas" and "observations". "Techniques" are a bridge between the two. Sometimes one starts from ideas and crosses the bridge to decide what data to collect and what it means. Sometimes one starts from data and uses techniques to generate ideas.
In a seminar on attitude research, the most interesting contribution this paper could make is the evidence of a positive correlation between professed behaviour and actual behaviour. Unfortunately, reliable figures on actual behaviour in the fields of extra-marital intercourse, abortion, prostitution, homosexuality and pre-marital intercourse are not available, so that we cannot judge the validity of the survey on the basis of the data regarding these activities.
In reviewing the paper presented by Mr. J.F. Boss I believe there will be consensus that this is one of the most specialised contributions to the seminar, for which we should be grateful as it is giving a clear overview on recent methodological advances in attitude theory and attitude measurement. In the following I shall try to give some information which could assist in getting a clearer view of the basic problems and the concrete operations in attitude scaling, prerequisites - and as such shortly mentioned by Mr. Boss - for understanding and evaluating the new techniques (cf. Table 4 in the paper by Mr. Boss) described by him in the main part of his paper.
Some important results for assessing marketing chances in different countries can be won by research in national stereo-types, especially those on qualities of goods produced in and by foreign countries.