Hamilton Power Tools

Hamilton Power Tools marketed industrial products by catering to constructional and industrial tool market. Their construction product lines included power trowels, power trowels, concrete vibrators, generators and power driven tools. Their industrial lines were primarily pneumatic tools: drills, screwdrivers etc. One of their products - gasoline-powered chain saw was slightly different from the above tools.

Mr. Campagna, the marketing manager for Hamilton Power Tools knew that the chain saw industry primarily catered to following markets:-Professionals (lumberjacks), farmers, institutions and casual users. Among these casual user segment was considered to be the future growth market. Hamilton Power Tools thus hired Consumer Metrics of Chicago to conduct two research projects. The first one was a projective technique known as Thematic Apperception Test(TAT) using picture response techniques. The basic premise of TAT research is that it in an unstructured and indirect manner encourages respondents to project their emotions, needs, motives, attitude and values at a sub-conscious level.

Purpose of research:

The research was primarily exploratory to gain insights into reasons why people make certain purchases. Mr. Campagna also wanted to get a flavour of language people use in talking about chain saw.

Analysis of method:

The research was conducted in states of Illionois and Wisconsin. People who were selected for TAT were screened on basis of whether they planned to purchase a chain saw in next 12 months or already owned a chain saw or had used a chain saw in past. However this was the only information collected, ideally some more information must have been collected regarding their demographics and more regions could have been considered. They restricted the sample to only two states.

How should Conway and Baggins respond to Hamilton's question?

Hamilton essentially wants to know the underlying motivations of a casual chainsaw user while making a purchase. Thus a Projective technique such as TAT could be for exploratory research to gain initial insight and understanding of a casual user. The purpose of the qualitative research would be to uncover at a subconscious level the factors which affect the purchase of chain saw by a casual user.

Is Hamilton investing the casual-user market segment correctly?

The method of screening on basis on if they have used a chain-saw or if they own a chain-saw or plan to use a chain saw might not result in a sample representative of the true population. They primarily want to tap into the segment which was considered future growth of the market. This segment might not be limited to the fore mentioned categories.

Also they are taking a sample from a limited geography. The responses