IMPROVING THE TASTE WITHOUT CHANGING THE INGREDIENTS
On page 179, Table XXIV—“Attitudes Ranked” shows an interesting picture of semantic contrasts. Note that “higher price” and “better quality” are at the top with the new design. “Lower price” and “poorer flavor” are at the top with the old label.
16. WHAT’S IN A NAME?
The name has a quantitative connotation. It has an “image” of quantity, not of quality. “The product you describe needs a name that has quality connotations.”
17. HOW IMPORTANT IS A TRADEMARK?
This report alone demonstrates that brand-identifying designs play major roles in marketing and that design details are vital factors in the success or failure of a marketing program.
18. DEVELOPING A PACKAGE WITH THE AID OF RESEARCH
The tests gave management a basis for making a marketing decision in regard to the package for a product of high quality.
19. DOES THE AD UPGRADE THE PRODUCT?
Conducting Tests Nos. 2, 3 and 4 requires great know-how and many controls. These are not the kinds of tests that can be conducted by amateur researchers. Strictly controlled conditions must prevail in conducting such tests. Controls must be used in the design of the test, in the consumer sampling and in administering it. The indirect approach is vital. Traditional, direct testing methods are not applicable here.
20. GIVING CONSUMERS WHAT THEY WANT
The Consoweld Corporation is consumer oriented. Top management, advertising, production, and creative department personnel are all consumer oriented. The executives have decision making conferences. The decisions are based on objective information of consumer interests and wants.
21. THE IMAGE OF A WOMEN’S APPAREL SHOP
The results of this study served as a basis for management decision in setting future policies in the operation of the store.
22. SCIENTIFIC MARKETING OF BREAD AND OIL
The management of Quality Bakers of America Cooperative, Inc. became interested in motivation research about ten years before the publication of this book. Robert Schaus, Advertising Manager of QBA, merchandisers of Sunbeam bread and other bakery products, presented a marketing problem to Color Research Institute in 1949.
The present symbol (oval with torch) of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana was developed by creative people with the aid of objective research under the direction of Wesley Nunn almost fifteen years ago, when scientific marketing was at the pioneering stage.
APPENDIX
The following are articles in which automobile trends were predicted more than a year before the publication of this book!
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
CHESKIN is a remarkable person. I have never known him to be wrong. One time when I said this to him, he replied that he was usually wrong but his research was right. I think this a good measure of the man—and of the book. He has been able to divorce his own personal likes, biases and personality from the research he does. He has been searching for “truth” independent of himself—or current fashions and fads in the research business.
By such a course of action he has run the risk of being labeled a maverick. However, his sole criterion of success is ability to predict success. And he is successful.
Probably no other person in this country could have developed the valid techniques that Cheskin has. The one main reason is the path that he took to market research. It is conceivable that an educator might become a top researcher but it is almost inconceivable that an artist would. But he owes a lot to art because it was his search for valid measurements of impact of colors and designs that led him to his techniques for testing on the “unconscious level.”
When you work with colors, you work on the subsymbol level. There is a hierarchy of communication. At the top are words—high order symbols. Next there are illustrations and overt symbols such as crowns, crosses, etc. Then there is the sub-symbol world of color. Color is so primitive that color reactions may be closer to physiology than perception. Black and dark blue are perceived as the same color yet because blue is received by the color cones in the retina (and black is received by the rods) we experience a much fuller “perception” of black. This is the area in which Cheskin started. He discovered and refined his techniques at this sub-symbolic level and then carried them into the symbol area of package testing. Here the visual perceptions of form and color are most important, and also there is the opportunity to test the validity of testing methods.
Packaging offers an advertiser a wonderful vehicle for testing. The goods move off the shelf—or they don’t. Also, there can be many experimental controls. Thus, Cheskin established techniques in color and design testing and proved the validity of them in the packaging field.
Now he has gone beyond packaging alone into the testing of print and electronic advertising. His techniques have gone through a development—but only after being proved on lower, more elemental levels. Most of us are forced to start at the highest testing level (advertising) where there are few sign posts to success. This is like trying to build a pyramid by starting with the top block.
The reader of this book may be looking for guidance in creative advertising—large picture, product shown in use, reader benefit, etc. He will not find it here. But he will find something more useable. The person who scans this book will get little. The person who reads this book will gain a philosophy about advertising. The person who studies this book will come away with a greater understanding of the forces which dominate and influence his own life.
Because of Cheskin’s insistence upon objectivity he has contributed much to making marketing research a science and, as he points out, modern marketing research is as much a science as modern physics. In this book, he does not merely say so. He demonstrates and explains.
Are Cheskin’s methods psychoanalytical or sociological? Is his research statistical or in depth? These questions simply do not apply. His research is not limited to any one school or type. It is all of the known kinds of research and more. He has no dogma. He merely is a problem solver. Because of this, his techniques and procedures have only one factor in common—ability to solve problems.
As the preface of this book shows, Cheskin is basically an educator. In the first two chapters, he approaches research from the management point of view. In the chapter “Dogs, Buyers and Sellers” he combines research with humor. In “Auto Makers’ Problems Can Be Solved,” he plays the role of critic of an industry.
In the chapter “Advertising of the Future,” he gives many helpful suggestions for the advertising profession. In “How Scientific Can Research Be?” he draws parallels between marketing research and sub-atomic research. In “Why Is Research So Vital in Planning a New Product” he is Freudian and in other chapters he shows a statistical orientation.
Those readers interested in the eye-movement camera will learn that Cheskin has been using it for measuring eye-flow of marketing tools for fifteen years, and before that for non-commercial purposes. The use of the visibility camera for measuring one aspect of display effectiveness is also explained.
Today, the semantic differential is a current fad in advertising. However, fifteen years ago Cheskin began using what is now
