The People and Gold is the title of a consumer research project carried out by InterScan during 1969. The project was concerned with investigating the consumer markets for gold in a number of countries. We took the title from one of the items in the brief given to us by our client. Consolidated Gold Fields Limited, one of the world's leading mining groups. The brief asked us to analyse for each important country: 1. The 'normal' psychological relationship between the people and gold; 2. The extent to which jewellery is looked on as providing a store of value; 3. Differences in gold-orientation by wealth level; 4. The psychological effects of increasing gold prices on the proportion of available cash going into gold; 5. The deterrent effect of current regulations on hoarding, if any. "The "important countries" were listed as U.S.A. , Canada, U.K. , Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Japan and India.
Studying the differences that exist in the patterns of consumption in the different countries it becomes evident, that a number of these differences is hard to explain. To give an illustration: How does one explain that in the Netherlands 98 % of the housewives use margarine and only 31 % use butter, whereas in France these percentages are respectively 47 % and 94 %, taking account of the fact that differences in prices are almost non-existent? In these cases classification of the housewives according to demographical variables does not suffice ; one will also have to consider psychological and sociological variables. The preceding motivated us, a multi-country institute, some time ago to consider a research of the attitudes of housewives in several European countries. Designing the model of this research we encountered a fundamental problem, viz. how does one have to measure the psychological and sociological variables in order to create comparability ? The solution of this fundamental problem, took so much time that at this moment we are not yet able to offer you the results of this research, but we hope to be able to inform you about it in the very near future. We are capable, however, to offer you briefly a problem analysis and an outline for a possible solution.
In this paper I will describe two multi-country advertising research studies which have been carried out by my company during the past three years. These studies have highlighted a number of problems and have taught us some lessons about how to achieve maximum international comparability at minimum time and cost expenditure. You may, of course, question some of the basic assumptions underlying both the research methods used and the value of researching advertisements multi-nationally. It is not the purpose of my paper to go into these questions. However, perhaps I need to make it clear that I regard the objective of this type of advertising research as essentially to check the attention value and communications efficiency of the advertisements under consideration and not to assess their relative selling power or "persuasion".
My task is to give an introduction into a discussion about a very important subject which we all know very well since a long time in every country - namely the sampling procedure. What may be the particular aspect of sampling problems on a European scale? Someone may have the opinion that a European sample is simply the addition of samples of the different countries. Up to a certain point this may be correct. Nevertheless, there will be a set of additional problems which we shall meet in practice - and therefore I want to pick up these extraordinary problems. I propose that we treat, at first, the sample of individuals and that we neglect - for the moment at least - those samples which are based on other units than individuals or households.
Comments on the presentations of P. Berent, Hansen/Damm and Morello.
As a whole the discussions in group three gave the following conclusions: 1. Independent from the methods, the organisation is the main problem of a multi-country survey; 2. Coordination must be done from one central point. Identical-sampling, coding a.s.o. are problems of second order, solutions must be found from case to case;. 3. One point Group III missed in all the papers: that is discussion on the possibility and the necessity of the central databank with all "official figures" of all countries, with identical classification.
During the discussion periods the Group was concerned partly with questions and issues arising out of individual papers, partly with more general issues relating to the problems of international research and ESOMAR activities in this connection. These notes concentrate on the latter. There is clearly some difficulties in defining exactly what are the problems and issues which arise in international research and which are peculiar to it. Some of the discussion in the Seminar - and particularly some of the case history material - was to a large extent dealing with points which are equally relevant in national surveys. In following through from this Seminar to other possible ESOMAR activities we ought to focus more closely on specifically international issues. Considerable time was spent during the sessions in discussing the problems of how to organise and coordinate international market research projects.
At the end of the first day, considerable discussion took place on the advantages and disadvantages of using chains of organisations. It was thought that the papers of Whitley, Haines, Berent and Jarvis nicely presented the arguments for: Central control of analysis and report but local autonomy of fieldwork (Whitley). Decentralisation of analysis and to a large extent, interpretation (Haines). International supervision and control using various local agencies (Berent). Specialized international department and tight control where local marketing staff is weak (Jarvis).
The logic of marketing which launched the decision makers to be conscious of the entire environment of their areas of operation., is now encouraging companies to surpass the boundaries of these areas and become international,- inter-sectorial, etc. To what extent does this development demand that the research worker prepare new research structures and tools ? And of what type ? These are the main questions which are worth contemplating, keeping in mind that developments in a series of markets make it more difficult than before for managements to interpret: and control what is actually happening in these new circumstances. The researcher is asked to play an active role by immediately adapting his own methodological and organisational tools to the subjects under review and to the operational demands of who is responsible for choosing the subject of the research. The international dimension is identified the moment the company starts to operate on a comprehensive basis in a particular segment of demand, so that all the markets are included in this single segment. To say that the various national markets can be considered of the same standard as those of regional areas in a given country is certainly a simplified statement, even although the regional differences are in many cases equivalent to national ones.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss briefly the organisation of the international research functions within the agency. International market researchers often discuss the problems of planning and executing individual multi-national surveys but, I think, comparatively little attention has been paid, at least in public, to the basic problems of organising international research itself within the agency. And of course the proper organisation of the international research function as a whole is a necessary precondition to the proper conduct of individual surveys.
Two sets of basic questions are typically faced by all manufacturing companies which want to sell their products abroad: 1a. to sell the same products that are sold on the domestic market also on the foreign markets without any particular adaptation, or 1b. to have different product policies for each country or area; 2a. to apply the same marketing communication and price strategies at home and abroad, or 2b. to adapt such strategies to the local (i.e. different) conditions.
Producing chemicals in Europe means traditionally an international approach to marketing and, accordingly, to market research. The reason why the activities of European chemical companies extend beyond national borders is because, on the one hand, chemical industries developed first in only a few countries of Europe. A new element has been added since 1945, when chemical market research as a whole became much more consumer-orientated. From that time onwards newly developed polymers in the form of plastic materials, textile fibres, elastomers and poromeric leather have been put on the market each year. In most cases the new synthetic chemicals appeared as branded materials, which distinguished them by property and performance from old established natural raw materials. Advertising campaigns and promotion programmes made the consumer aware of these new products in the introductory phase. At this stage, with new plastics and new synthetic fibres being offered on the market, the chemical companies got deeply involved in multi-country research of two types, industrial and consumer orientated research.