METHOD OF CONSUMER STUDY

4.2.1 Products of Interest

This study was focused on the direction of improvement of glue stick. As mentioned before, glue stick could be in the form of permanent bonding or temporary bonding so the decision on which type of glue stick to be developed had to be made. The permanent bonding glue stick is a solid adhesive in lipstick-type container. The adhesive is usually intended to give a permanent bond when applied to paper or cardboard. The advantages of this product when compared to other glue products used for paper work are: easy to apply, does not seem to soak through paper, less messy, short drying time, easy to carry in pocket. For the temporary bonding glue stick, the glue coated surface can be adhered to a receiving surface such as paper, notice board, desk-top and can be removed from this without leaving traces of adhesive on the receiving surface, and this can be repeated a number of times. This product has advantage over the self-adhering note pad in that the latter has a limited field of utilization, although it in itself functions very well.

As permanent bonding glue stick products were already on the market, the commercial products were given to consumers as a reference for generating their opinions towards the product. However, temporary bonding glue stick was not available on the market at the time, so the self-adhering note pad precoated with glue, which had similar properties as that from temporary bonding glue stick, was used.

Although the study was focused on glue stick, other glue products such as: liquid glue, paste glue, PYA glue, cellotape and 2-sided tape were also included in the study in order to get general information on pattern of glue usage from consumers.

4.2.2 of in New Zealand and Thailand

The first consumer study was conducted in New Zealand with Thai and New Zealand consumers. They were 21 Thai students in various Faculties at Massey University and 21 New Zealand students in the Technology Faculty, Massey University. This survey was done in order to preliminary explore the general glue product usage by consumers

and to identify any problems consumers had when using glue products. Important attributes of glue stick and self-adhering note pad were generated by the consumers. The second consumer study was conducted in Thailand with Thai consumers. They were 17 undergraduate students, 17 post-graduate students (both groups were studying at Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand) and 17 government office staff. In this study, the importance of the product attributes elicited from the former study were measured to confirm that they were important according to the consumers in Thailand. Buying intention, price and size or the glue stick product to be developed were also obtained. This was further used to develop the concept of the product.

4.2.3 Method Used in Generation of Attributes

Normally the important attributes of products can be obtained from the literature in the

same area or from the company reportt;. However, i f there is no such information available the list of the important attributes has to be developed for that specific product. It is widely known that the important attributes perceived by consumers are different from those perceived by researchers. In order that the important attributes to be used in further study were the same as the ones consumers used in making decisions of glue selection, consumers were employed in establishing the list of important attributes. In this study, the consumers in New Zealand were asked to think about any problems they had with using glue products and write it down in the questionnaire (see Section 4.2.5). Samples of a commercial glue stick, 'UHU' (GmbH, Germany), and self­ adhering note pads, 'Post-it' (3M), were also given to consumers as references. After that they were told to give a list of attributes they considered important for the products. With this method, the consumers were reminded to think of the problems and they described them in the first part of the questionnaire, so they could identify the attributes they thought were important in the following part of the questionnaire.

4.2.4 Method of of Attributes

There were two methods used in this study: open-ended elicitation measure and direct­ rating method. Both methods were used in the survey conducted in New Zealand. Only the direct-rating method was used with consumers in Thailand.

In the elicitation measure, consumers were asked to give lists of product attributes that were important to them in evaluating a glue stick and a self-adhering note pad. Responses were analyzed to determine what attributes were mentioned and in what order. An importance index for a given attribute was defined for each individual to incorporate order of elicitation. This involved dividing the rank order of elicitation of the attribute (where 1 = last elicited attribute through n = first elicited attribute) by the

number of attributes elicited by the subject. If an attribute was not mentioned, the index number for that attribute was set to zero (Jaccard et aI., 1986).

In the direct-rating method conducted in New Zealand, consumers were asked to evaluate the importance of the given attributes of products using the linear scale containing scores from 0 to 1 0; 0 = not important, 10 = very important. Product

attributes used were obtained from a literature survey and the researcher's opinion. In the study conducted in Thailand, scores 1 (not important) to 5 (very important) were used and the list of attributes were obtained from the results of the consumer study in New Zealand.

4.2.5 for Consumer in New Zealand and Thailand

The for the consumer in New Zealand comprised questions related to glue product usage especially glue stick, the problems consumers had with product usage, improvement of glue products, important attributes of glue products. The questionnaire used with Thai consumers was translated into Thai. Questionnaire testing was conducted before the survey with 3 Thai students and 3 New Zealand students. Alteration of the questionnaire was made where necessary. The questionnaire used in the survey is shown in Appendix 4.1 .

The for the consumer in Thailand was written in Thai. It comprised questions related to glue product usage, rating of glue attributes' importance, buying intention, size and recommended price of product to be developed. The questionnaire was pre-tested with 6 Thai students at Massey University. The questionnaire including the English translation are shown in Appendix 4.2.

4.2.6 Method

A self-administered survey was used in both surveys. In the survey conducted in New Zealand, as the number of respondents was small a 'drop and collect' survey was used. The questionnaires as well as the product samples were handed out to the respondents. They were allow enough time to fill out the questionnaire, approximately 3-4 days then return it back.

In the survey conducted in Thailand, the questionnaires and the productsamples were given to the representatives of each group of consumers who handed them to the consumers. After the questionnaires were finished the consumers returned them back to their representatives.