WHO BUYS CANNED SARDINES, AND WHY? 



INTRODUCTION 



In market research it is important to 

 know how many people do what . It is even 

 more important to know why . 



The methodology of supplying answers 

 to how-many-people-do-what is well estab- 

 lished. The first part of this report is 

 concerned with the interpretation of the 

 results of household consumers' responses 

 to questions on what buying habits, serving 

 habits, etc., they have. In effect, this 

 interpretation amounts to deciding how many 

 household consumers prefer particular 

 attributes of canned sardines in relation 

 to other groups with different preferences. 

 The selection of a random sample repre- 

 sentative of all the householders in the 

 areas surveyed was determined by statis- 

 tical methods in common use. Also included 

 in the first section of the report is the 

 analysis of consumer responses to the use 

 of two related motivational research 

 techniques — the open question and the probe. 

 These techniques represent an initial step 

 in the process of learning the why of 

 consumer buying habits . 



tVhile the study of marketing behavior 

 over several decades hcis developed a number 

 of methods of investigating the why of con- 

 sumer habits, motivational research is 

 relatively new. Practitioners in the field 

 of motivational research sometimes disagree 

 as to the emphasis to be placed upon the 

 special techniques drawn from any one of 

 the social sciences such as statistics, 

 psychology, economics, and sociology. The 

 principal techniques of motivational re- 

 search in the field of consumer marketing 

 behavior, however, are derived from 

 psychology. 



The second part of this report is con- 

 cerned with the results of the motivational 

 analysis of the marketing behavior of con- 



sumers of canned sardines based on other 

 research techniques. Motivational market 

 surveys require the services of a staff 

 trained to interrogate consumers with 

 special probing techniques, and a highly 

 skilled research staff is needed to 

 interpret the results of the recorded re- 

 sponses. Moreover, motivational research 

 studies are much more expensive than 

 consumer surveys using conventional 

 statistical methods. This situation has 

 a direct bearing upon the size of the 

 motivational research survey which can be 

 made for a fixed sum available for con- 

 sumer research. As a compromise between 

 the maximum population coverage to find 

 out how many people do what with canned 

 fish and the limitation imposed by the 

 cost of motivational research into why 

 they used it, three urban markets v;ere 

 selected for study instead of a national 

 survey. 



The populations under study consisted 

 of households within the urba'ized areas 

 of Boston, Massachusetts; Detroit, Michigan; 

 and Birmingham, AlabaFia. In addition , 

 Negro households located in the rural areas 

 of Orangeburg County, South Carolina were 

 surveyed, Negro households in rural areas 

 of the southern states represent an impor- 

 tant market for canned sardines . The 

 Orangeburg County results will be summarized 

 in this report and will show the cross- 

 classification of various marketing data by 

 race for Birmingham and Detroit. A western 

 city was not included in the survey because 

 of a lack of funds to cover the cost of 

 interviews. Area probability samples were 

 selected to represent the populations 

 covered and interviews were completed with 

 the homemaker or person mainly responsible 

 for planning the meals as follows : 



