From 1976 to the beginning of the millennium¿covering the quarter-century life span of this
book and its predecessor¿something remarkable has happened to market response research: it has
become practice. Academics who teach in professional fields like we do dream of such things.
Imagine the satisfaction of knowing that your work has been incorporated into the
decision-making routine of brand managers that category management relies on techniques you
developed that marketing management believes in something you struggled to establish in their
minds. It¿s not just us that we are talking about. This pride must be shared by all of the
researchers who pioneered the simple concept that the determinants of sales could be found if
someone just looked for them. Of course economists had always studied demand. But the project
of extending demand analysis would fall to marketing researchers now called marketing
scientists for good reason who saw that in reality the marketing mix was more than price it
was advertising sales force effort distribution promotion and every other decision variable
that potentially affected sales. The bibliography of this book supports the notion that the
academic research in marketing led the way. The journey was difficult sometimes halting but
ultimately market response research advanced and then insinuated itself into the fabric of
modern management.
