"Good Return" On Money Contributed To I.W.S.

Press, Volume C, Issue 29535, 9 June 1961, Page 15

"Good Return " On Money Contributed To I.W.S.

“It is my very profound conviction that woolgrowers are getting an incredibly good return in comparison with anything else they could do with their money.” aaid

Mr A. P. Zen tier, director of economics for the International Wool Secretariat, when he was asked in Christchurch this week whether money being put up tor the secretariat by the woolgrowers of Australia. New Zealand, and South Africa was achieving results. “If It is accepted that over the years we have made the average price of wool higher by as little as a halfpenny a pound it can be shown by simple arithmetic that the return on the money spent is extremely good.”

Mr Zentler said that one of the main parts of the programme of his department in the next two years would be the development of techniques for measuring the effectiveness of money spent on promotion on an individual campaign basis, a country basis and a worldwide basis. The only reason why not as much of this had been done in the past was that there were neither the funds nor the personnel to do the job. His department was now being built up. Mr Zentler said, and he hoped that by next year there would be something like 10 persons to service the world-wide organisation. Almost any major policy decision of the secretariat had a large content of economics in it. said Mr Zentler. “If we are able to improve the efficiency of our operations by even a little it pays for a department of 100 people, let alone 10.” Growers, said Mr Zentler. often had the idea that the money they were contributing was a large sum and from the point of view of a small country such as New Zealand it was. and in the secretariat they were most grateful for it, but when it

came to be spent in 13 or 14 countries it was really quite a small amount Discussing the scope of the work undertaken by his department Mr Zentler raid that when the three woolgrowing countries made their contributions to the secretariat a decision had to be made as to what countries this money was going to be spent in and how much should be devoted to each. For this purpose they had developed and were continuously improving a completely original methodology. Another policy problem tor which the same technique was used was to determine how mbney should be spent in a country—what product should be promoted. When these problems were solved the actual promotion had to be carried out. with decisions having to be made to use newspaper, magazine, or perhaps poster advertising. His department wanted to find out how wool could best be put across to the consumer—what was the picture of wool and wool textiles in the mind of lhe consumer. This was done by sample surveys of consumers. There was a traditional way of doing this, but more recently techniques had been developed which relied more on psychology. These aimed to find out what really was in the consumer's mind and not just what he might say. Sometimes he might deliberately lie, but in other cases he tended to rationalise his opinions and beliefs. “Emotional Buis'* Psychologists had shown pretty conclusively that people's behaviour was not so much rationally as emotionally based, and in trying to influence them it was necessary to influence them in a way that would be effective in changing their attitudes and actions. “We have adopted these new methods to try to uncover their real attitudes." Mr Zentler said that to do all this it was necessary for his department to carry out continuous research in factors that influenced a demand for wool and wool textiles, and to determine the importance of each of these factors and the way they operated. It was to the credit of the growers, he said, that they had set up an economic department when the secretariat was founded, but in the last 11 years during which he had been associated with it it had greatly expanded. An important aspect of its work was Its role as an information centre, and an aim of the department was to extend its collection of data on which a great deal of its work was based. Outlook for Wool “I would say that wool is without any doubt in a difficult position today," said Mr Zentler, discussing the outlook for the fibre. “The only hope is that as a result of the reorganisation of the secretariat and the larger funds which will be at its disposal we will be able to take more effective action. Provided we have woolgrower support for our activities I feel that this situation can be remedied. I do not think, however, that we can relax and say all is fine with wool when everything is not fine with wool." The main problems were the availability of fairly large quantities of artificial fibres on the one hand and the very large expenditure of artificial fibre Interests on promotion and research on the other hand. “They have pretty good tactics in selecting isolated fields in the wool textile industry on which they concentrate the full blast of their pretty impres- ( sive gunfire, and we have ’ pretty small resources which have to be spread rather thinly," he said.