Abstract:

This paper is a description of an actual case history, and concerns a consumption panel as opposed to the traditional purchasing panel. Consumption in this case covers food and drink, but the technique can equally be applied to other fields. It differs from traditional purchasing panels in two main respects: 1. It covers all foods and drinks consumed at home, and is not restricted to any particular category, such as coffee, or tea, for instance. One can therefore study the competitive element between product fields, as opposed to brands. 2. It is not only limited to studying the influence of traditional factors (region, family size, age of housewife, etc.) on consumption. It also reveals the influence of new factors : day of week, time of day, presence of guests, sex and age of actual individual consumers of the product in the household, etc.