Insights into the Structure and Practice of Marketing Research in a Socialist State: The Polish Experience

This paper describes the structure and focus of marketing research in the Polish socialist state at two levels of operation: (1) centralized activity, as typified by the Institute of Internal Trade and Services, the nation’s leading marketing research unit; and (2) enterprise level activity, illustrated by PREDOM/POLAR, Poland’s state enterprise for manufacturing refrigerators and washing machines for the domestic and foreign markets. By comparison with western standards, the Polish marketing infrastructure is not highly developed, and its traditions are recent. The focus of contemporary marketing research is influenced by the economy’s bureaucratic organization and resulting rigidities in marketing structures and practices, and by the interests and special competencies of the nation’s small number of specialized marketing research groups.