Data Transmission will enable large and powerful computers to operate and exercise control over distances and, with switched networks, to intercommunicate with one another. Though public opinion remains sceptical the combined strength of the technical developments of the computer allied to communication links raise intriguing possibilities for mankind, including a move from an industrial society to an information society, allowing a fuller life. The paper therefore details the marketing research effort which has already gone into this problem both in the past, and recently, for the United Kingdom and in pan-European studies. An account is given of two very large scale market surveys, firstly the Scicon study which covered the United Kingdom in 1968, followed by the PA investigation carried out in 16 European countries during 1972.
A comparison of the behaviour patterns and opinions of car drivers in various countries shows similar tendencies with increasing motorisation and leads to the conclusion that if the advertising approach is brought in line with these consumer attitudes and behaviour patterns an international advertising campaign is possible and promises to be successful.
A comparison of the behaviour patterns and opinions of car drivers in various countries shows similar tendencies with increasing motorisation and leads to the conclusion that if the advertising approach is brought in line with these consumer attitudes and behaviour patterns an international advertising campaign is possible and promises to be successful.
It would seem that traditional methods of advertising research have hardly yet tried to evaluate this problem. Either companies have judged communication needs from market research. A typical source has been cross-country surveys like that of the Reader's Digest. Or they have used pieces of advertising research which have tended to emphasise cultural difficulties to be overcome. In fact research has probably served more to accentuate the differences than to build upon common features. It is hard to quote a campaign which has been built in a truly international way by finding common factors and using them. Possibly this is because the planning starts in one country, often the U.S.A. , and tries to involve others.
ESOMAR has carried out a survey of the scope and the organisation of market researchers in Europe. This was not a field survey, which, on grounds of cost, could not be contemplated, but a series of interviews by experts. The experts were ESOMAR's national representatives in 19 European countries.
The need for research in Europe could thus fall into one (or a combination) of the following clearly defined important groups. A. Single country projects in order to establish first of all if there is a potential market in the country and possibly secondly how this potential should be exploited. At this stage a list of possible acquisitions could be a major objective.; B. Single country studies where the overall potential is already known but data is required on how to exploit it profitably; C. A multi-country project looking at the total European market in order to establish in general terms how a company should plan: 1. its overall investment strategy. 2 . its detailed marketing plans. d . A multi-country project where the overall potential is already known and where data is needed on how to exploit the markets profitably.
The People and Gold is the title of a consumer research project carried out by InterScan during 1969. The project was concerned with investigating the consumer markets for gold in a number of countries. We took the title from one of the items in the brief given to us by our client. Consolidated Gold Fields Limited, one of the world's leading mining groups. The brief asked us to analyse for each important country: 1. The 'normal' psychological relationship between the people and gold; 2. The extent to which jewellery is looked on as providing a store of value; 3. Differences in gold-orientation by wealth level; 4. The psychological effects of increasing gold prices on the proportion of available cash going into gold; 5. The deterrent effect of current regulations on hoarding, if any. "The "important countries" were listed as U.S.A. , Canada, U.K. , Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Japan and India.
Studying the differences that exist in the patterns of consumption in the different countries it becomes evident, that a number of these differences is hard to explain. To give an illustration: How does one explain that in the Netherlands 98 % of the housewives use margarine and only 31 % use butter, whereas in France these percentages are respectively 47 % and 94 %, taking account of the fact that differences in prices are almost non-existent? In these cases classification of the housewives according to demographical variables does not suffice ; one will also have to consider psychological and sociological variables. The preceding motivated us, a multi-country institute, some time ago to consider a research of the attitudes of housewives in several European countries. Designing the model of this research we encountered a fundamental problem, viz. how does one have to measure the psychological and sociological variables in order to create comparability ? The solution of this fundamental problem, took so much time that at this moment we are not yet able to offer you the results of this research, but we hope to be able to inform you about it in the very near future. We are capable, however, to offer you briefly a problem analysis and an outline for a possible solution.
In this paper I will describe two multi-country advertising research studies which have been carried out by my company during the past three years. These studies have highlighted a number of problems and have taught us some lessons about how to achieve maximum international comparability at minimum time and cost expenditure. You may, of course, question some of the basic assumptions underlying both the research methods used and the value of researching advertisements multi-nationally. It is not the purpose of my paper to go into these questions. However, perhaps I need to make it clear that I regard the objective of this type of advertising research as essentially to check the attention value and communications efficiency of the advertisements under consideration and not to assess their relative selling power or "persuasion".
My task is to give an introduction into a discussion about a very important subject which we all know very well since a long time in every country - namely the sampling procedure. What may be the particular aspect of sampling problems on a European scale? Someone may have the opinion that a European sample is simply the addition of samples of the different countries. Up to a certain point this may be correct. Nevertheless, there will be a set of additional problems which we shall meet in practice - and therefore I want to pick up these extraordinary problems. I propose that we treat, at first, the sample of individuals and that we neglect - for the moment at least - those samples which are based on other units than individuals or households.
Comments on the presentations of P. Berent, Hansen/Damm and Morello.
As a whole the discussions in group three gave the following conclusions: 1. Independent from the methods, the organisation is the main problem of a multi-country survey; 2. Coordination must be done from one central point. Identical-sampling, coding a.s.o. are problems of second order, solutions must be found from case to case;. 3. One point Group III missed in all the papers: that is discussion on the possibility and the necessity of the central databank with all "official figures" of all countries, with identical classification.