Market Research and Its Role In Enslavement A Brief Description of Techniques Used By Marketers To Enslave	Not Assigned
30 March 1999	by Tony ByGarthno
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I attained much of the following information through my own research, 

some of this information may seem obvious or it may be new to youÖmy 

goal is to share this informationÖ.enjoy.

The art of training the consumer to buy particular products stems 

from extensive data analysis of product distribution and analysis 

of historical sales.  This analysis along with other data is used to

develop ìCategory Managementî plans which are literally schematics 

of the supermarket shelves with products strategically placed where 

the analysis tells the category manager the product will sell the 

best.  The placement of the product on the shelves is an extremely 

important part of the marketers planning.  You will notice that

new products are often at eye level so that they are seen first, 

increasing the probability of the consumer to purchase the product 

while older products are either high on the shelves or low where 

they are not as easily seen.  Marketers study many aspects of the 

consumerís shopping trips such as market basket analysis, buyer 

conversion, trial and repeat purchases and cannibalization.  These 

are just a few of the studies that are carried out and I will expand

on these and other methods of research carried out by supermarket 

retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers in future essays.



Market researchers compensate consumers willing to participate in 

their studiesÖthese participants use hand held scanners and cards 

similar to frequent buyer cards to track all of the purchases made 

by the consumer and all the different data that goes along with the 

purchase.  This data includes the name of the supermarket, its 

location, the demographic makeup in the area or market that the 

supermarket resides in, if the product was purchased on promotion 

such as buy one get one free or coupon, time of day and 

all the other products that were purchased on this trip to the 

supermarket.  These participants are also encouraged with ìgiftsî to

participate in surveys which touch on issues that the clients of the 

market research firms want more information on or if the market 

research company believes they can profit from the sale of a particular 

study by selling the information to many of its clients it will carry 

out the study.  All the data that we voluntarily provide supermarkets 

and market researchers is often sold to manufacturers of consumer 

products and the data is used to manipulate us and our children into 

wanting their wares.  



Ever notice that around the end of September you begin to see coupons 

for candy and Halloween related goods in your Sunday paper.  They are 

put there to act as catalysts to jump start the sales of consumer 

packaged goods manufacturers products, products with slightly altered 

packaging for the season or the marketing event (Holiday), this is 

another plot to generate sales.  The marketers job is to CREATE a need 

for their product, the need is often created through the ever so subtle 

programming of the population by overexposing them to advertisement 

with the belief that if the consumer is exposed to the product enough 

they will slowly begin to believe that they do have a need for this 

product or good.  There are also social pressures used to manipulate 

consumersÖ.often times in upscale markets private label products 

(generic or store brand) are rare and occupy some of the less visible 

shelf space and the variety of the private label products is slim.  

This is done because people in upscale markets often will not buy the 

private label brand and marketers realize this through the analysis of 

their historical sales data.  So what do they do?  They donít encourage 

the sales of less profitable private label brands, they promote the name 

brands whose only difference is the brand equity or consumer loyalty that 

the manufacturer has cultivated in the consumer.  This is all for nowÖ.if 

this essay is published I will go into further detail on each of the 

subjects I discussed.  

Thank you for taking the time to read this essay.

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