1. What have you learned about the potential market for soup in glass jars?

2. What else would you like to know?

3. How else would you assess people’s attitudes toward this concept?

For several years, the management of National Kitchens, a diversified packaged-foods manufacturer, had been watching the rapid growth in sales of microwave ovens. They were particularly interested in the prospects for ready-to-eat soup in glass jars. The attraction of glass packaging was that the soup could be heated in a microwave oven in its original container. However, a single-serving, ready-to-eat soup in a glass jar was expected to cost $1.10 as compared to $0.90 for a comparable canned soup. While the price premium for glass was thought to be excessive, there were some new data on the acceptability of this price premium that had just been provided by a glass manufacturer.

The Research Study

The glass manufacturer had designed a brief questionnaire to evaluate consumer attitudes to glass packaging for a variety of microwave-oven cooking jobs. This questionnaire was mailed to 600 names obtained from the warranty cards returned to one microwave oven manufacturer. The results had just been tabulated and were being shown to National Kitchens.

The questionnaire obtained information on microwave usage. Two key questions addressed the issue of ready-to-eat soup in glass directly: 

15. Would you purchase ready-to-eat soup in a single-serving container (approximately 10 ounces) that could be put directly into your microwave oven and poured into a bowl after heating? Assume the same price per serving as canned soup.

Yes About how many individual servings per month

No Why not? _______________________________

16. Please review question 15 and indicate below whether or not you would be willing to pay 20 cents more per individual serving for the product.

Yes

No

Of the 600 questionnaires, 312 were returned. The responses to questions 15 and 16 that related to soup in glass are summarized in Table 11.4.

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Table 11.4 Summary of Question Responses Q. 15: No. of responses Q. 16: No. responding that they would pay 20 cents more per serving Number of servings per month O ("No") 103 185 = would not pay 20 cents more 2 12 7 4 26 19 5 9. 6 6-10 31 14 11-15 19 9 16-20 56 38 21-30 11 31-40 17 8 41-50 14 10 50+ 1 1 3.