Abstract:

Our study was based on representative samples of important groups of the food trade: 50 interviews among wholesale companies: 50 interviews among central offices of chains and 333 interviews among retailers with an annual sales volume of DM 200.000 or more. Generally, the owner or general manager was interviewed, in larger companies the person in charge of promotional activities. Fieldwork ran from Juli to September 1971 . Armin Hoeger, at that time Nestle's research director, subsequently became an independent research consultant and started, at first together with "Lebensmittel-Zeitung", now with GfK, a weekly audit of promotions in the food trade. It is called "PID" (Promotion Informations Dienst). Its inauguration was the logical consequence of the earlier piece of research. Both began to close a gap in our knowledge at a time when promotional activities increased significantly and played a growing part in the efforts of both producers and trade companies to hold or increase their shares of market. Armin Hoeger has kindly supplied me with material from PID for this contribution, which is gratefully acknowledged. PID is based on weekly surveys by Interviewers in a panel of 100 food shops, carefully selected to fairly represent those with annual sales of DM 1 million and more.