',^'HO BUYS CANfED TUNA, AND -VHY? 



INTRODUCTION 



In market research it is important tc 

 know how many people do what. It is even 

 more important to know why . 



The method of obtaining answers to 

 how-many-people-do-^hat is well estab- 

 lished. The first part of this report is 

 concerned with the interpretation of house- 

 hold consumers' responses to questions on 

 what are their buying habits, serving 

 habits, etc. The results tabulated show 

 how many household consumers prefer partic- 

 ular attributes of canned tuna in relation 

 to other consur^iers v.'ith different pre^r- 

 ences. The selection of a random sample 

 representative of all the householders in 

 the areas surveyed was determined by sta- 

 tistical methods in common use. /,lso in- 

 cluded in the first section of the report 

 is the analysis of consumer responses to 

 the use of two related motivational re- 

 search techniques — the open question and 

 the probe. These techniques represent an 

 initial step in the process of learning 

 the why of consumer buying. 



V-liile the stuJy of marketing behavior 

 over several decades has developed a num- 

 ber of methods of investigating the why 

 of consumer habits, motivational research 

 is relatively new. Practitioners in the 

 field of motivational research sometimes 

 disagree as to the emphasis tc be placed 

 upon the special techniques drawn from any 

 one of the social sciences such as sta- 

 tistics, psychology, economics, and 

 sociology. The principal techniques of 

 motivational research 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 tuna based on other re- 

 search 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 inter- 

 pret the results of the recorded responses. 

 Moreover, motivational research studies are 

 much more expensive than consumer surveys 

 using conventional statistical methods. 

 This situation has a direct bearing upon 

 the size cf the motivational research sur- 

 vey which can be made for a fixed sum 

 available for consumer research, ^^s a 

 compromise between the maximum population 

 coverage to find out how many people do 

 what with canned fish and the limitation 

 inposed by the cost of motivational re- 

 search into why they used it, three urban 

 markets were selected for study instead 

 of a national survey. 



The populations under study consisted 

 of households ^-ithin the urban areas of 

 Boston, Massachusetts,' Detroit, Michigan; 

 and Birmingham, Alabana. In addition, Negro 

 households in the ritual areas of Qrangeb'irg 

 County, South Carolina, were surveyed. Negro 

 households in rural areas of the southern 

 states represent an important market for 

 canned sardines. The Orangeburg County re- 

 sults will be sujnnarized in the sardine re- 

 port which iidll shov7 the cross-classifica- 

 tion of various marketing data by race for 

 Birmingham and Detroit. Area probability 

 samples vrere selected to represent these 

 populations and the homemaker or person 

 mainly responsible for planning the meals 

 was interviewed. A western city v;as not 

 included in the survey because of a lack of 

 funds to cover the cost of interviews. 



The interviewing phase of this study 

 was carried out between March 13, 1959, and 

 May hy 1959 as follows: 



