A method of concept testing which includes performing a multi-attribute evaluation of prompts comprising concepts and existing products which compete in the same consumer market, eliciting from consumers evaluations of the extent to which each attribute ideally should be possessed by a product in the same consumer market, eliciting from consumers evaluations of their likelihood of purchasing the existing products and products described by the prompts, performing an independence factor analysis, ...

A marketing tool having portable lap computer for recording a sales call made by a salesman of an employer on a customer. The information of the call is transmitted from the lap computer to a master computer and at the end of the day, the master computer prepared a letter to the customer acknowledging the sales call. The acknowledgement letter is sent on the letterhead of the employer and in the color of the letterhead logo. The master computer automatically prepares a daily planner or planning ...

Data processing for an improved student population maintenance system for educational institutions predicts number of students for a target year, costs for target year, revenues for target year, tuition charges for a target year, marginal costs for each student in a target year, checks for internal accuracy and consistency compared to predetermined norms, calculates "scholarship" fee for prospective students at present value, checks for statistical validity. On a periodic basis, e.g. daily, pres...

A computer implemented product evaluation system includes a data base storing evaluation data of products, and a data processor responsively connected to the data base, receiving a request to evaluate the success and lack thereof of one of the products, evaluating the success and lack thereof of the one of the products, and generating an evaluation result. The evaluation result indicates the success and lack thereof of the product with respect to at least one of the following: category, and clas...

A market research system and method are provided. A plurality of cooperating establishments are included in a market research test area. Each cooperating establishment is adapted for collecting and storing market research data. A computer system remotely located from the plurality of cooperating establishments stores market research data collected from the cooperating establishments. The collected market research data includes monitored retail sales transactions and captured video images of reta...

A merchandise analysis system for predicting the sale of a registered item, including: a sales data table having sales data of a plurality of items; an input terminal for registering an item and for setting an analysis term; a retrieval unit connected to the table and the input terminal to search the sales data table for the sales data corresponding to the registered item and the analysis term; a function table having various functions fitted to respective data of sale versus price; a dispersion...

A system and method for discovering consumer purchasing tendencies includes a computer-implemented program which identifies consumer transaction itemsets that are stored in a database and which appear in the database a user-defined minimum number of times, referred to as minimum support. The itemsets contain items that are characterized by a hierarchical taxonomy. Then, the system discovers association rules, potentially across different levels of the taxonomy, in the itemsets by comparing the n...

A system for monitoring and forecasting customer traffic and customer servicing at a location wherein each customer may be served at any one of a plurality of available service stations. A detector at the entrance of a defined area detects passage of a customer at the entrance. At each service station, a sensor detects the presence of a customer proximate to the station. A data processor is used for registering the time of the day when the passage is detected, the time of the day when a change o...

A method and apparatus for evaluating business opportunities for supplying goods and services (such as business forms and services) to potential customers takes a quantative approach that allows a user to evaluate a potential customer's needs, and the user's ability to supply those needs, to see what the area of opportunity for the user to supply that need is. Calculations can also be made comparing the user's ability to fulfill the needs to some absolute standard, to also determine an area of e...

In an inventory control method and system, changes of sales for individual goods are forecasted and the excess or deficiency of a stock of each of the goods at the present point of time is estimated from the results of forecast. In order to facilitate an inventory control, merchandise information is sorted and displayed in accordance with the degree of urgency, the degree of importance or the like of inventory adjustment on the basis of the results of estimation.