Abstract:

Continuous measuring of a market trend is normally carried out through the data collection system known under the name "Panel' . A Panel can he composed of different subjects (house wives, men, households, retail shops, etc.), according to the scopes of the survey, whilst also the continuous measuring of a market development is peculiar to each panel. In this particular case we refer to a household panel; this shows the following characteristics: - the household is sampling unit; - the members of the households are the persons whose purchases must be surveyed; - normally it is only one member of the household that records the purchases of ail members. We deal here with a case that gives particular difficulties with a view to the data collection, just because the sampling unit (household) is an abstract element, that becomes concrete in more subjects (single members of the household) whose purchases are recorded - in behalf of the survey - by only one of the household's members (in general this is the housewife). If these three elements (household, single members, person that records the purchases of all the family) can be considered as subjects of survey, let us now study their purchases of a particular type of semi-durable goods, viz. textile consumption. In this case the products being studied are all textile articles that can be bought in a household, either for individual use (dresses, coats, knitted goods, etc.}, or for collective use (household linen, carpets, furnishings, etc.)