Many legislative decisions have been adopted regarding the dissemination of product information to consumers. However, there is very little evidence that consumers' purchase behaviour has been affected by these actions. This paper is an attempt to assess the causes of such a lack of efficiency and to propose solutions for a more effective approach. It is argued that policy-makers' decisions are strongly influenced by implicit hypothesis about consumer behaviour and. that these implicit models are always incomplete and often wrong.
As consultants, we have been usually involved in reducing uncertainty associated with marketing decisions in large international companies. It means in general implementing simulation models based on more or less complex internal information systems. When we have to deal with fashion goods, uncertainty is even much larger. However, paradoxically, simple information systems may be designed, provided full cooperation of various services in the company is obtainable (which is easier to achieve in a medium-size company). To prove how a simple information system can be efficient even on an agitated market, we shall deliberately analyse the simplest of our experiences in the field of the manufacturing or distributing clothing.
The study I am reporting on is meant to bridge the gap between the conceptual systematics of export marketing research, as found in textbooks, and concrete marketing analysis. This study was developed purely as a model of instruction, if served no economic purpose. The study was conducted in 5 EEC countries, in France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and the Federal Republic of Germany. The Committee chose the market for vacuum cleaners as a reference model. Its purpose was to show to wide circles interested in multi-national studies - how an intensive marketing analysis must be pursued methodically; - the sort of questions market research can and cannot give an answer to; and efficiency and information value of various survey techniques.
The implementing of an ISM in a firm is a long and complex operation as it is not only a question of the construction of technical tools, but equally and especially the insertion in the firm of a work method placing data processing at the service of marketing . It consequently insists on the close cooperation of the specialists of these systems and those individuals responsible for the marketing and data processing of the firm. We are not going to present here in detail the numerous stages of the implementing of an ISM, but limit ourselves to some essential aspects of its development; the designing or its initial schema director, its progressive validation, the sequence of different sub-systems which compose it, the experimentations to which it leads and its pedagogical role.
The implementing of an ISM in a firm is a long and complex operation as it is not only a question of the construction of technical tools, but equally and especially the insertion in the firm of a work method placing data processing at the service of marketing . It consequently insists on the close cooperation of the specialists of these systems and those individuals responsible for the marketing and data processing of the firm. We are not going to present here in detail the numerous stages of the implementing of an ISM, but limit ourselves to some essential aspects of its development; the designing or its initial schema director, its progressive validation, the sequence of different sub-systems which compose it, the experimentations to which it leads and its pedagogical role.
All market research aims to fix the efficacy of the sales and to know the demand and the influence of certain factors upon the consumers' manifestations and their decisions. The determination of the necessities which must continually satisfy industry is a complex process with multilateral implications, based essentially on the market study. Among the market studies, an important part is reserved to the econometrical analysis of demand. Even field research, the empiric research of economic sociology and of social psychology, cannot dispense with the econometrical analysis of demand, characterising the market, the market's potential, its absorbing capacity of different products, This is the basic frame of all marketing research, and no marketing techniques must ignore the great economic relations - as is the case with income or price - in consequence of which the market's processes are settled. Although we can know and evaluate a series of factors determining and influencing certain products' demand, it is not easy at all to know this demand, as it constitutes a very fluid process, in permanent movement of continual adaption of the buyer to the changes and modifications of his own situation and its surroundings. The phenomena to be studied are therefore numerous, different and multi-directed. The main purpose of studies is the research of the relations allowing a more precise forecast of the demand and of the consumers' decisions.
What I would like to do is to suggest that ad pre-testing (or "copy-testing") techniques can be simplified considerably and their efficiency greatly improved by a reassessment of the role which the pre-test should play in improving the effectiveness of advertising. First of all, I would like to discuss the question of the role of the pre-test and then the question of suitable techniques.
The study we were asked to carry out was related to a specific promotional strategy that the interested company had developed for a product included in its line. Objective of the study was to test by experiment the efficiency of this strategy in view of its large scale application.