Our objective then is to determine whether consumer panels are truly representative of the market place for soluble coffee. To explain this low coverage, we looked closely to: 1) The kind of consumers sales that the panel was providing us. The kind of consumers sales : only household consumption at home is provided. 2) The kind of product we wanted consumers sales for : Soluble Coffee. The convenient character of soluble coffee is irrefutable, so we can imagine a higher usage when convenience is required : Vacation; Working place; Week; and when living alone.
Conclusion of the Seminar on The Effective Use of Panels.
In saturated markets the need of segmentation is increasing. By the method of cluster analysis all members of a panel are separated in relevant segments for this product category. The efficiency and validity of the segmentation is proved by comparing the buying behaviour between the different clusters in terms of number of buyers, quantity bought, product-types, brands etc. Because media exposure is known from all panel members this can very easy be analysed for each cluster. The success of marketing activities of the manufacturer focussed on an special cluster in the population can later on be controlled by looking for changes of the purchasing habits of the panel members is that cluster. A practical application of this type of segmentation in the G&I household-panel is shown for a food product field.
The main purpose of this paper is to invite comment and criticism from the seminar and from other interested parties. The future of the project described in the following will to a large extent depend on these reactions. The planned project is a panel study similar to the one carried out by BMRB and presented by Colin McDonald at ESOMAR 1970. The main feature of that study was the relationship between brand switching and previous OTS. This feature will be repeated in this study. In addition this study will be extended so that the following relationships may be examined: 1. The relationship between OTS and changes in evoked (brand) sets; 2. The relationship between evoked set characteristics and brand performance in terms of penetration/repeat purchases; 3. The relationship between consumer types and reactions to advertising. The research plan aims at a panel of 500 households in one city. Panel members will be interviewed before and after the 13-week panel period.
The paper provides a comparison of some aspects of Consumer panel operations in Canada and the United States with those in Europe. The main difference is the method of recruitment, the use of mail and telephone in North America compared with personal calls in Europe. The problem of panel pick-up levels is discussed and reference made to factoring data using client shipment data and the use of UPC Codes in diary completion by panel members. The paper concludes with a discussion of the future of Consumer Panels with special reference to the implication of Scanners.
Marketing research is a fundamental part of marketing within TRIUMPH INTERNATIONAL and was already operating in the early fifties. From the very beginning consumer panel activities played an important role within our German TRIUMPH company and - since the early sixties - all over Europe.
For those of us from a manufacturing environment panel research means to an overwhelming degree continuous monitoring of markets through retail and consumer panels. In the UK the key operators are Nielsen and Audits of Great Britain (AGB). The AGB service is properly referred to as the Television Consumer Audit (TCA). I shall speak as a company man, the company being United Biscuits (UB) but these observations and thoughts cannot but be seasoned by, on the one hand thirteen years client service experience at Nielsens, and on the other several years as a member and Chairman of the TCA Users Committee. This is a liaison committee involving AGB, the television contractors, and the manufacturer clients.
The paper deals with a detained investigation in the nature of the holiday planning process. The forecasting entities have to be holiday segments. It is comparible with forecasting sales for specific product attributes. At this specific level problems arise because a holiday has too many marketing relevant attributes which are highly interrelated and substantial unstable during the planning process. Other relevant methods, treating the planning process as a black box, like time series analysis will be tested when enough observations are available.
The aim of a panel as an instrument of market observation, market diagnostics and market planning is to deliver trend market informations gained in regular intervals, f.i. a week, a month, a year etc., in dealing with the same universe.
This paper deals with efficient estimation of descriptive statistics such as means, totals and percentages from rotating panel surveys (panels with partial replacement). It is supposed that the variable under study is measured repeatedly. When the correlation between consecutive panel estimates of that variable is high and positive, a considerable gain in precision can be achieved using special methods. This gain in precision can be translated into a smaller panel size if the accuracy of the estimates is satisfactory already. The gain can be achieved by using a so-called composite estimate , which is a weighted combination of current and previous estimates. The method of the composite estimate will be described in section 2 and its variance will be discussed briefly in section 3. In section 4 some results will be given on the possible gain in efficiency which the use of composite estimates may yield when respondents are replaced after three measurements. Most of the theory in sections 2 and 3 however holds for all panels with replacement after a fixed number of measurements, whether it be two or ten waves. The paper continues with a worked-out example in section 5 and the conclusions are given in section 6.
The examples in this paper are drawn from one example of 'closed universe panels' ie. Sharescale Panels, which are set up on an ad hoc basis to measure particular product fields, usually to test the effect that a new brand might have in that field. Recently, however, Sharescale Panels have been set up to determine, inter alia, optimum price levels of existing brands - making use of the unique qualities of these panels to measure the effect of price.
Important changes during the past twenty years in the distribution, concerning for instance the number of stores and their average size have very often been mentioned. Significant socio-demographic changes in most of our countries during the past years which have been much less emphasised have also taken place. They have consequences on market trends and market segmentations in terms of brands, varieties and packagings which are of a great and practical interest for marketing people. From consumer panels it is possible to build up indicators showing short and long term changes and their consequences. It is also possible to forecast what the near future will be.