CONSUMER PREFERENCES IN PURCHASE OF MEAT 31 
Question 16. — (e) When you purchase meat, are you influenced bv salesmen? 
(Tables 44 and 45.) 
A total of 2,870 housewives of the American white group answered 
the question of whether in purchasing meat they were influenced by 
salesmen. Of this number, 73.8 per cent stated that they were not 
influenced, 16.3 per cent that they were, and 9.9 per cent that they 
were influenced sometimes. 
The replies of the housewives of Fargo, New Orleans, and Wash- 
ington indicated that they believed they were influenced by salesmen 
to greater extent in purchasing of meat than were the housewives of 
the remaining 13 cities, 57.6 per cent of the housewives of Fargo, 39 
per cent of those in New Orleans, and 35.7 per cent of the Washington 
housewives of the middle and well-to-do classes stating "Yes" or 
"Sometimes" in answer to the question. (Table 45.) 
Question 16. — (/) When you purchase meat, are you influenced by price? 
(Tables 46 and 47.) 
The influence of price in the purchasing of meat by consumers is 
an important one to producers and distributors. Housewives' esti- 
mates of the extent to which they were influenced by price in the 
purchasing of meat were obtained through this question. Over half 
of the number in the American white group who answered the ques- 
tion stated that they were not influenced by price in purchasing of 
meat, 26.3 per cent of the number said they were influenced by price, 
while 16.5 per cent answered that they were only partly influenced. 
Thus 42.8 per cent of the group replied that they were influenced to 
various extents by price in their meat purchasing. 
Kather important variations were noted in the replies of the house- 
wives of the four classes in the American white group, as 40.7 per 
cent of the housewives of the poor class, 53.4 per cent of those of 
the middle class, 61.9 per cent of those of the well-to-do class, and 
77.3 per cent of those of the wealthy class said that they were not 
influenced by price. Stated in another way the replies indicated 
that of the total number of housewives in the poor, middle, well-to- 
do, and wealthy classes, 59.3,46.6, 38.1, and 22.7 per cent, respectively, 
said that they were influenced by price. 
In the colored group the relative numbers of housewives influenced 
and not influenced by price in both the middle and poor classes did 
not vary much from those of the housewives of these two classes in 
the American white group. 
In order of rank as indicated by the percentage of the total num- 
ber of housewives stating that price had an influence in their pur- 
chasing of meat, the nine foreign groups were arrayed as follows : Scan- 
dinavian, English, Italian, German, Russian, Finnish, Polish, Jewish, 
and French. 
Rather wide variations were found when the answers to this ques- 
tion were grouped by cities. (Table 47.) Fargo was the city in 
which there was the largest percentage of housewives of the com- 
bined middle and well-to-do classes who stated that they were 
entirely or only partly influenced by price in their meat purchasing, 
68.5 per cent of the housewives of this city answering either "Yes" 
or "Partly" to the question. The city with the lowest correspond- 
ing percentage was New Orleans, with a percentage of 29. There 
