The research buyer\u27s perspective of market research effectiveness

This study examines the views of research buyers about the efficacy of market research used within their firms. A sample of research buyers from Australia's top 1000 companies was asked to evaluate the research outcomes of their most recent market research project in terms of their overall business strategy. Specialist market research buyers (insights managers) believed their commissioned research was very effective. This was in contrast to research buyers in generalist roles who did not believe in the effectiveness of the research outcomes to the same extent. The overarchlng strategic direction adopted by the buyer's firm did not make a difference to the type of research conducted (,action orientated' vs. 'knowledge enhancing'). However, entrepreneurial firms were more likely to rate their research as effective and to have dedicated research buyers generating insights into their markets. The results of this study are inconsistent with earlier studies and indicate that the market research function within Australian firms stili plays an ambiguous role

Notes on some Tasmanian chitons

Some time ago I received from Captain Beddome, of Hobart, several specimens of three species of Chitons, labelled respectively Chiton speciosus, Chiton australis, and Chiton liratus. At the time they came to hand the South Australian forms were engaging my attention, and I at once saw that there must be some mistake in regard to those sent under the names of speciosus and liratus, as they could not be made to answer the original descriptions of those species, but the difficulty of satisfactorily identifying them by reference to the literature at my command compelled me to put them aside for the time being. A few months since some Chitons collected by Dr. Perks at Port Elliot, Encounter Bay, were submitted to me for examination, when I recognised that they were identical with the specimens sent to me by Captain Beddome as Chiton australis, Sowerby, and I so labelled them; further, I exhibited an example before the Royal Society of South Australia as an interesting addition to the molluscan fauna of this colony. Having, however, since had the privilege of studying the exhaustive work of Mr. H. A. Pilsbry on the Polyplacophora (Chitons) as part of Tryon's Manual of Conchology, I found I had been too hasty, and had fallen into the too common snare of accepting a name under which a species is popularly known, and that, instead, the shell was the closely allied Chiton novaehollandiae, of Gray