In a new book The grocers: the rise and rise of the super-market chains the authors Andrew Seth and Geoffrey Randall report an estimated 3% of an average adult life will be spent in a supermarket. "The store themselves partly reflect, and patently drive, significant shift in social patterns- the irresistible growth of self-service, new global foods availability and sourcing; new feature, storage and display techniques; car-borne shopping; out of town centres and the decline of urban as well as rural high streets". This dynamic sector accounts for 4% of total research spending.
In order to clarify our thinking about questionnaire design, it will be helpful to break down the issues associated with it into distinct groupings. A useful four way classification of these groups is as follows: a) meeting research objectives b) obtaining valid and reliable data from respondents c) facilitating the interviewers task and subsequent data processing d) achieving and maintaining respondent involvement. Groupings b), c) and d) are dealt with in the individual sections of this chapter. However, the first group of issues connected with meeting research objectives deserves special mention at this preliminary stage.
The purpose of this presentation is to discuss a new movement that will affect consumers world-wide in the next few years. It is an area where research is at the very heart of decision making in companies. This movement is called Efficient Consumer Response. While ECR is, at the moment, primarily a US grocery strategy, the parallels between the US and European grocery business are strong. ECR therefore, definitely has interesting and far-reaching implications for European business. The presentation looks closely at ECR and the role research and technology can play to mould ECR into the form best suited for the pan-European marketplace. ECR links the entire consumer goods chain into a mutually beneficial partnership. The immediate tangible result of ECR is better pricing. This is a direct product of a leaner, faster, more responsive and less costly supply chain. It necessitates manufactures, distributors and retailers working closely together to bring greater value to the consumer through better products, better assortments, better in-stock service and more convenience. The ultimate goal of ECR is to achieve a flexible, consumer driven system in which all parties work together to maximise consumer satisfaction, minimise cost and increase profits. Making ECR truly effective is that fact that it is scanner driven. An EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) system is the most sophisticated data gathering devise ever invented, giving information which is both precise and fast. The presentation gives examples of this and expands on the development of new technologies which arc making this information easily and quickly managed. ECR grew out of the successful implementation of Quick Response, a concept developed eight years ago by the textile industry. Over the past eight years, the concept of Quick Response has evolved and expanded into ECR. ECR has four main strategies: increased productivity of space and store inventories; increased efficiency of store inventories; increased productivity of both trade and consumer promotions and increased productivity of all activities associated with product introductions. Research can play a critical role in each of these strategies. It is just a matter of time before ECR gains wide spread acceptance and usage throughout Europe. The research industry needs to be well prepared to take maximum advantage of this so we can be in a position to reap the benefits of a more efficient distribution, culminating into having the right product at the right time, at the right place.
Computer-interactive (electronic) interviewing shows promise of producing higher levels of respondent interest fewer errors, and data with breadth and richness unattainable through conventional means, all at comparable cost. The Xerox Corporation undertook a methodological study to test the feasibility of electronic procedures in Germany and the UK during the Summer of 1979. The questionnaire dealt with office equipment and made use of Trade-Off Analysis. All interviewing took place in the respondents' own places of work. In each country equivalent samples received either paper-and-pencil or computer-administered interviews. The results favour the electronic approach. The electronic method produced superior prediction of respondents' subsequent choices among new product concepts. Those respondents receiving the computer-interactive interview also rated the task as both easier and more interesting than those receiving the paper-and-pencil interview.
Consumer panels have by this time become a relatively classical device for investigating buying habits in the field of mass-consumption goods: it occurred to us that a rather different type of panel could be devised with a view to checking on sales of less popularised products. The foundations of the SOFRES Panel started to be laid in the late Sixties, on the basis of new mailing questionnaires techniques which led to renewed interest in the psychological forces underlying refusal or acceptance of response to ad hoc questionnaires. The special technique behind the SOFRES Panel was thus built up by reference to two sources of practical experience: - conventional consumer panels, - the ad hoc questionnaire.
The examples given here: the Irish readership survey, the family Interview for consumer durables, the 7-day aided recall survey, the cigarette study, have a common philosophy. The techniques respect both the respondent and the interviewer. They accept that the respondent has the truth inside him and is willing to divulge it. But it is not an easy thing for him to do. The researcher and his interviewing team have to help him do so. To this end they have to: a) adjust their approach to evoke maximum respondent co-operation; b) give the respondent a feeling of confidence and of competence in all that is required of him; c) solve the problem of communicating exactly what is required of the respondent; to introduce a learning process; d) solve the problem of enabling the respondent to answer without ambiguity and in a way that obliges the respondent and not the interviewer to allocate the answers; e) establish the pattern or configuration of events - to reconstruct.