Abstract:

By 1986 liquid milk sales in the United Kingdom were declining at the rate of about 1% p.a. Within this slowly shrinking market, several structural changes were taking place including the growth in popularity of lower fat milks and an increasing proportion of sales through supermarkets (as opposed to the traditional British milkman). This paper outlines a programme of research, qualitative in nature, but by no means "traditional", which was undertaken with a view to examining the relationship between the many influences thought to be at work and developing a "soft model" of the cause/effect relationships between attitudes and behaviour in the UK milk market. The basic tool of the study was series of "sensitivity panels", that is groups of consumers who were intentionally sensitised by exposure to the issues which we wished to research, which were used to explore reactions to carefully managed changes in behaviour. The paper reviews how the panels operated, including some of the difficulties encountered. It sets out to show not only how qualitative research can play a part in managing and utilising data but also that "old data" need not gather dust.