Sentence Completion: This technique is quite similar to word association. Respondents are presented with a number of incomplete sentences and asked to complete them. As with the word association test, respondents are asked to complete the sentence with the first thought that comes to mind. To ensure that this is done, respondents are timed. Sentences completion tests may provide more information about the subject’s feeling than word association; but they are not as disguised... Read more

The non-structural techniques for attitude measurement are primarily of value in exploratory studies where the researcher is looking for the salient attributes of given products and the important factors surrounding purchase decisions as seen by the consumer. Structural techniques can provide a core objective measurement system, one which is more comparable to a scale or a yardstick. The term scaling has been applied to the efforts to measure attitudes objectively and a number of... Read more

The scaling methods discussed above all enable the researchers to measure to some degree consumer attitudes toward products and brands. In general, they permit one to determine such things as which brand is perceived by consumers to be more economical than another, less glamorous, more old fashioned and so on. Two or more brands can thus be compared on as many different characteristics as the researchers consider significant or is imaginative enough it bring... Read more

Likert scales involve a list of statements related to the attitude in question. Instead of checking only those statements with which they agree, however, respondents are asked to indicate the degree of agreement or disagreement or disagreements with each of the statements. Each degree of agreement is given a numerical score and the respondent’s total score is computed by summing these scores from all the statements. The following examples on attitudes towards hot cereal... Read more

People in the United States send several billions of dollars each year on eyeglasses and contact lenses. About 90 percent of the adults older than 40 require some kind of vision correction. Many younger people and children also wear eyeglasses and contact lenses to correct faulty vision. Because of the large increase in population that occurred during the ‘baby boom’ years – approximately 1946-66—it was expected that the demand for eyewear would increase noticeably... Read more

Sample design is a problem that must be addressed in any sampling operation. This subject may be divided into (1) determining sampling units, (2) selecting the sample items and (3) estimating universe characteristics from sample data. The sampling section will be devoted to an examination of these topics, with particular emphasis on methods of sample selection. Determining sampling Units: Consider that problem of finding the proportion of grocery... Read more

The actual application of the sample size formulas given in this article requires consideration of a number of related issues. These include the following: (1) The formulas given are applicable strictly to simple random sampling only. Other commonly used sampling systems will be a larger sample size of the same precision. (2) These formulas relate to the sample size needed for the estimation of one particular characteristics of interest. A survey is... Read more

There are many possible uses of this method of scaling; new applications are being developed steadily. Some of the uses that have already been identified are the following: Market segmentation: If brands are located as points in preference space, as in the example and consumers ideal points are similarly located, market segments may then be viewed as subspaces in which consumers have similar ideal positions and perceive the brands similarly. ... Read more

Different samples from the same universe will give different estimates of the universe value. he estimate from a particular sample will generally differ from the universe value because of sampling error – that is, because the sample chosen will not be a precise replica of the universe. If researchers took another random sample from the same universe, the resulting estimate could differ a little, somewhat, or a great deal from the estimate obtained... Read more

A major hotel chain desires to evaluate the potential offered by the incentive travel market (e.g. trips that companies award as prizes in sales contest). The chain has a list of 21,476 companies that might have used travel prizes as incentives. It wishes to estimate what percentage of this prospect list used travel incentives in the past year. It is projected that... Read more