The approach adopted to assessing the effectiveness of national destination advertising, where the final sale is not made in an easily measured fashion, should ideally be multi- facetted. In the case of major changes in advertising campaigns made by the Irish Tourist Board, in its principal overseas markets, the assessment of the campaigns was not just confined to consumer attitude research, but also was accompanied by tracking of enquiry levels by source type, and by the outcome in visitor numbers and the performance of key segments from the marketing regions concerned. A number of interesting lessons were learned with regard to the design and implementation of ongoing tracking approaches.
Huge changes are occurring in South Africa. Change in Africa has occurred, as it has in Eastern Europe, as a result of social, economic and political pressure. Some of these social and economic pressures are discussed in this paper. Thousands of school-leavers are entering the job market each year, many of them with little chance of finding a job because many are under-qualified and there is tremendous competition for each job available. Thousands of Black immigrants are entering the Republic of South Africa from neighbouring territories, either to escape armed conflict (e.g. Angola. Mogambique) or to escape the poverty and lack of employment prospects in their own country. There is a movement from rural to urban areas within the Republic to escape the prevailing economic depression. It is impossible to quantify the inflow accurately, but the growing number of squatter camps and the over-crowding of townships is obvious to any observer. Despite the earlier strict application of apartheid laws, aimed at restricting Blacks to the so-called home lands, people still flooded to the industrial areas in the hope of obtaining work. In the absence of enough work to go around, semi literate and unskilled people who are still firmly steeped in 3rd World Culture are having to adapt or die. The development of the so called informal sector has been the answer. It is nothing short of phenomenal. Its growth appears exponential. It is providing a livelihood for tens of thousands of people who cannot be absorbed into the formal, 1st World Economy. This paper tries to put the informal sector into perspective: its size and extent is investigated. Some of the difficulties of defining unemployment are briefly touched on. By virtue of its being informal and unrecorded, considerable difficulty exists in trying to research or quantify this market. There is always the fear of unlicensed, unregistered businesses being fined or closed down, and thus any information gathered has to be viewed with considerable caution. Various methods of quantifying this market are discussed. The more important developments within the informal sector are then reviewed, which indicate the resourceful nature of human behaviour. The authorities, on their part, have had little option but to suspend and ignore transgressions of licensing and registration. The human tidal wave has forced legislation to be repealed or suspended thus allowing the free enterprise system to develop more fully. The conclusion is that people can change the structure of society. Recent dramatic political developments are also the result of the inevitability of giving human beings the right to work and live where they would like to. Difficult though it is. the informal and often illegal sector can be researched, but special care is required, with many cross-checks to assure validity.
In the following investigation a yet topical subject is taken up, namely the possible consequences for the beer market arising from the verdict of the European Court of Justice to repeal the purity law. The German beer market is a fragmented market in which over 1,1 suppliers offer more than 4 products. An information campaign launched by the brewers' association as well as references to the purity law in beer advertising have explained the differences between German and foreign beer to the consumers, subliminally indicating that foreign beer is generally made of chemical ingredients and unhealthy. This (incorrect) interpretation led to the situation that imports stand no chances in the German market if not brewed according to the purity law, so reference is made voluntarily (perforce) to this fact in advertising for all imported beer. Even after the repeal of the purity law, foreign investors have no chances in the German beer market if they do not comply with the respective regulations. The fact that hardly any investments are made in the German beer market by foreign brewers (apart from those already serving the market) after the 1987 verdict does, however, not derive from the purity law, but exclusively from the unsatisfactory profit situation. As long as higher profits can be made in other countries, even the considerable potential of the German market is of no interest to investors. Yet there are still chances in the German beer market if investors do not expect to sell large quantities or become market leaders except in niches. In spite of the dislike of foreign beer, premium import beers have an excellent image, although their advertising budgets are rather modest compared with competitive German brands.
This paper reports a research effort to increase our knowledge of how excellent marketing can be assessed and identification of factors leading to success in the market place. The concept of excellence and of excellent in marketing in particular is discussed. Various measures of excellence in marketing with their inherent advantages and disadvantages are emphasized. The chosen dual evaluation approach, i.e. evaluating marketing exellence from the perspective of consumers and business is described. Two related empirical studies conducted in Denmark, the one carried out with a sample of firms and the other, a large scale consumer study are reported. It was found that firms (marketers) and consumers partly differ in their use of criteria of excellent marketing performance, and that success criteria vary across product categories. However, factors attributing to excellent marketing were found to be in concordance with accepted marketing knowledge. Managerial and theoretical implications are highlighted.
In this article we present new characterizations of marketing productivity that address current trends in the economy and in information technology. Recent work in the field of management science, building on ideas from engineering, economics and statistics, offers the first satisfactory multi-input, multi-output measure of productivity. It does so in a way that is meaningful to managers, is especially suited for use in the growing service economy, and leads to the real-time control tools that are needed to manage productivity in actual enterprises.
This paper will describe a project recently undertaken in the United States to attempt to validate some commonly used copy testing measures. New Product commercials were chosen for study for two reasons: 1. in their own right, they represent a special class of commercials of interest to many marketers; and 2. they are considerably easier to validate than ads for established brands, for a number of reasons described in the paper. The key in-market validation measure used was the level of consumer trial generated by the commercial (after correcting for differences between brands based on ad spending, promotion and price). The paper describes the validation procedure in detail, including its limitations, and then shows the results for two major copy-testing procedures: day-after-recall (e.g., Burke tests), and the Viewer Response Profile (as developed by Schlinger).
The findings presented in this performance refer to the sales-development of pharmaceutical product-groups in national markets. All findings are based on experimental experiences, combined with our know-how in long range forecasts. By the here presented findings shall be set up the possibility for the pharma marketing-manager to control the sales of his product program by better knowledge of the future market-conditions in a way, that makes him maintain his market-position or even improve it.
This paper focuses on the analysis of change across three distinct, but interrelated environments: i) consumer; ii) economic and iii) retailing. Past failures in retailing research have resulted from a lack of focus and direction and from attempts to diagnose the strategic implications of change in isolation from changes in the consumer and economic environments. The paper begins with a framework for analysis and an overview of change in the three separate environments. Later, several tracking studies examine different markets/countries over time as an example of how integrated research can aid in strategic planning for mass retailers. Here the focus is on changing consumer needs and changing retail merchandising strategies in the fashion, grocery and fast food industries.
The paper argues that this research, as well as providing a necessary check on the Board's marketing performance, should provide useful guidance to the creation of future marketing. In order to assess the extent to which such research has proved so useful, two cases of evaluation research are discussed, each concerned with a regular piece of marketing literature - a tourist accommodation guide ("where to stay") and a main holiday brochure ("English holidays"). In each case, the paper restates the action recommendations given to marketing management in the original survey report, and describes what, if anything, happened as a result of these recommendations. From these, and similar assessments not detailed in the paper, it was found that just over a half of research department's recommendations were taken up.
Summary from the Seminar 1976 on "Research into distribution problems and consumer purchasing behaviour for the publishing industry".