Psychoanalytic Contributions to an Operational Research Study of Marketing

The findings and experiences reported here are not unique. Indeed, following presentation of this paper, a member of the audience apprised us of a somewhat similar study of a large American meatpacking firm by a psychiatrist and a team of economists. The psychiatrist and the economists separately studied the Board of Directors and attempted to predict the decisions which the Board would make on problems before it. The psychiatrist consistently predicted the Board's decision more often than the three economists, knowing only the personality structure of the individual members and their positions on each problem, but not knowing the economics or profitability of the alternative courses of action. These latter were the bases of the economists' predictions.In another case, MELVIN THORNER, M.D., Sc.D., also a psychiatrist, studied the interpersonal dynamics of a group of engineers in a metallurgical company. He was able to predict decisions of the research department also on the basis of his understanding of the personality of the individuals responsible for the decisions, and showed that the decisions often were independent of the technical merits of the problems, and which subsequent technical results verified.In a separate study reported last week at the meeting of The Institute of Management Sciences in Paris, we presented results which indicate that managerial decisions in general are "projective" in the psychological sense. The value of these findings is to help clarify the ways in which unconscious needs and attitudes manifest themselves in emotions and in the whole life process, including in the development of the individual's life style, whether in doing operational research, in managing, or in any other area of human endeavour. If the individual understands and reduces the distraction induced by these needs and processes, he becomes able to direct more of his energies, intelligence, and resources to more productive and profitable channels. Every life experience, including doing operational research, offers opportunity for gaining this increased understanding.Much work has been done recently on discovering the consumer's conscious and unconscious motivations for buying particular products. This information helps the seller to manipulate the buyer. Its orientation thus is the opposite of the orientation of the several studies reported here. These are rather concerned with helping the individual to understand himself in the full depth of his rich personality and to permit himself thereby not to be manipulated either intentionally or fortuitously, as by his seating arrangement, chair style, co-workers' attitudes, or his own obsolete needs and attitudes. Thus, these studies are directed toward results which help him to enrich the scope and content of his life experience to his full potential.     

Marketing Research Applications of Non-metric Scaling Methods

This paper discusses the experiences gained in conducting a variety of pilot-level applications of multi-dimensional scaling studies in buyer perceptions and evaluations of products and services. One study, dealing with expert vs. non-expert judgements of print advertisements, is examined in some detail as an illustration of the methodology. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major problems-computational, substantive and philosophical-which remain for further research and future developments likely to occur in application of the methodology.     

Some Applications of Queueing Theory in Operational Research (1953-89)

An account of the development of queueing theory from an operationalresearch perspective is given. The theory discussed ranges fromthe simple queue, finite queues, and queues in tandem, to non-Poissoninput and service-queueing systems. A methodology for analysingthe systems is outlined, and appropriate references given. Allthese developments relate to models used in investigating realproblems undertaken by different operational research departments.     

Operational Research in Chile

Since the beginning of 1963 SIGMA has had a team of operational research scientists working for Compañía de Acero del Pacífico, one of the largest steel-makers in South America. The task has been to demonstrate the value of operational research to the company by solving a series of both tactical and strategic management problems and also to train some of the company's own engineers to form an effective internal operational research team.The company has allowed us to publish the results of any of the studies made and this has made it possible to write a complete story describing not only the work done and the successes, but also the difficulties that were encountered and the mistakes that were made. This article is not intended therefore to demonstrate yet further applications of well-known techniques nor to develop original problem-solving methods; rather it is to come out in the open and reveal the really difficult practical problems that face almost any operational research men and show how we attempted to solve them.     

Implementation in Operational Research: a Review of the Operational Research Quarterly

This paper focuses on the changing nature of the subject matter of articles reported in the Operational Research Quarterly from 1965 to 1974. Subject matter classifications are developed and then investigated over time. In addition, tabulations describing both implementations and use of actual data are illustrated. Significantly, it is shown that the percent of implementations described in the Journal have averaged less than 30% during the period 1965-1974. In addition it is shown that of the remaining articles published during this period only 17% use actual data.