This paper seeks to describe the conditions which have led to the emergence of various business omnibus services in the UK. It describes the change in British industrial activity which has led to new product development which in turn has led to new technique development to research the new markets. It goes on to describe the current status of business omnibus services and also briefly examines other syndicated services currently available to suppliers of business products and services. A brief review of European services is then undertaken which was as up-to-date as possible at the time of writing. The final section of the paper looks to the future and does not attempt to predict what will happen but merely to put forward some ideas for potential new services which hopefully will promote even more activity in what for the UK is a growing market.
The objective of this paper is to explain the use of micro- simulation models in different types of marketing problems. When and how should they be used, what are the practical requirements of such surveys and what sort of solutions to marketing problems can be expected from this methodology.
The Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE) is a public organisation whose institutional tasks concern the promotion of the image of Italy and the development of foreign trade. At the time of the study the trade exchange between Italy and Japan was at extremely low levels. For that reason, ICE decided to try to formulate an integrated marketing strategy for promoting Italian products in Japan. To achieve this end, it was decided to launch a major research project in Japan, and ICE engaged PRAGMA to plan and coordinate the research. Traditionally, ICE has been mainly involved in sectorial promotions in the business community. The research and marketing approach in this case was to observe the total picture among not only the business community, but coordinating and integrating the views of Japanese consumers and Japanese opinion leaders as well.
We all know from our experience that amongst companies selling to non-consumer markets there is a wide divergence in the importance assigned to market research, the resources devoted to it and the way in which it is used, It was in order to quantify these differences that Marplan Germany and Marplan UK together undertook a programme of research. Research was carried out by means of telephone interviews with a sample of the largest companies in two sectors.
The development of market research and marketing shows us that, based on a series of market research results, the patient is playing an ever larger role in the marketing strategies of the pharmaceutical industry. We can see that the patient receives his information via the communication channels physician, pharmacist and mass media. In order to check the efficiency or penetration of these measures, the patient monitor has been developed by Marplan, which is based on data from 12-15000 patients per year, gained from representative questioning of the population, at regular intervals. The potential uses of this instrument are shown, based on a pretest, which had already been carried out. Of utmost importance is the question, whether with similar products, potential target groups can be reached in different ways, and how to find out the causes. It would be the job of marketing to discover whether changing the product or the marketing strategy would raise the market share for specific target groups.
The aim of this paper is to assess the comparative costs and benefits of single location and multiple location telephone interviewing for multi-national research projects. Special attention is paid to studies involving two or more European countries, as it is this type of multi-national research that is most likely to lend itself to telephone interviewing as an alternative to other methods - particularly as a result of the rapid growth in telephone penetration amongst private households in European countries.
We have attempted to address in an approach to measurement we have called 'Brand Diagnosis'. Our objectives in doing so were to combine the 'divergence' of a qualitative research methodology with a method of analysis which would simulate the 'convergence' of normal quantitative methods. Our aim was therefore to find an approach to brand image measurement which would preserve the capability of providing insight - typical of qualitative research - and at the same time provide the sort of structured findings that the decision-orientated environment of a marketing company usually requires.
This paper is concerned with the use of market research to adjust the marketing stance of the Australian Tourist Commission in the light of changing conditions in their main European markets, so that the appeal of Australia is maximised as a long haul holiday destination. The paper is based on a programme of consumer research carried out in the United Kingdom and West Germany by Marplan. The research has as its starting point the perceived changes in world tourism which brought about a redefinition of the Commission's marketing objectives.
This paper highlights the lack of attention that has been given to the interviewing process for the past two decades; and describes the kind of problems that arise continually under current interviewing procedures. The results of a survey of interviewers are given; and the negative implications of these findings for most market research surveys are discussed. The extent to which direct access telephone panels can remedy these short comings is then explained. The implications of future technologies for data capture are examined.
The objective of this paper is to investigate what can be learnt about comparative politics from an examination of public opinion poll data across country. The two countries selected are Germany and Britain: and the data compared is mainly taken from political polls conducted by Marplan in both countries between April and June 1979.
In November 1978 a new tabloid newspaper was launched in the Midlands and Northern areas of England. It was positioned directly against existing popular newspapers. Marplan, on behalf of The Sun, monitored its launch in order to predict its sales level and to identify its editorial strengths and weaknesses. This paper describes the sales success achieved by that newspaper: evaluated against its published targets. Most of the paper, however, deals with the level of editorial success achieved: and how this compares with the editorial ratings given to existing popular newspapers. As a bi-product of this study much data of value emerges on the editorial requirements of readers of mass circulation daily newspapers. The paper describes the techniques used - and the results obtained. Finally the paper describes a multivariate approach to classifying people in terms of their requirements from popular newspapers. This approach offers significant opportunities for the accurate identification of "what leads people to read popular newspapers".