Abstract:

Motivation research in the consumer markes is too little used as a systematic means of obtaining information within the framework of marketing information systems. On the other hand it is sometimes used wrongly as ad hoc research of which more is expected than it can give. This arises from the stamp that the pioneers of motivation research impressed upon its development. It was typical of the old concept that the objective of motivation research was too restricted, its range overstated and its function too little distinguished from the methods. The profitability of a marketing information system nevertheless remains far below its possibilities if it does not include a subsystem for the recording and interpretation of motivation data. The conditions for doing this are already met. It is in fact possible (1) to define the psychological standards with which a product or a service must comply in order to create and maintain demand, (2) periodically to test the degree to which these conditions are satisfied by one's own product and those of competitors, and (3) to express the results of such testing in symbols that make possible research into their interplay among all other variables subjected to the test.