Research in Retail Merchandising of Farm Products: Appraisal of Methods and Annotated Bibliography

Excerpts from the report Summary: Research on the retail merchandising of agricultural products was greatly accelerated after the Congress passed the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946. This report constitutes an appraisal and summary of the published research directly related to methods employed in the retail merchandising of agricultural products from August 1946 to September 1958. During that period, over 200 published reports have given results of research in this area. These studies have had the general objective of determining the relative effectiveness of specific merchandising methods in increasing the sales of and demand for farm products. An annotated bibliography of the publications reviewed in the course of this study is included. The research techniques most commonly used in conducting retail-store merchandising research were: (1) Surveys using observation of existing practices, interviews, or mail questionnaires; (2) matched-lot experiments; (3) test-store experiments; (4) test-versus-control-store experiments; and (5) controlled experiments employing statistical (experimental) designs, such as the latin square, randomized complete blocks, double change-over, and factorial design, to control or measure the influence of nonquantitative factors on the merchandising methods undergoing test.