Market Research

The Rouse Co. unveiled yesterday a partnership with a New York research company that will give consumer product companies access to its malls and customers.The alliance with Research International USA aims to generate millions of dollars in revenue for the Columbia-based mall developer and provide Rouse with continually updated information and market data about its customers, building on a similar link Rouse made in April with WPP Group PLC, Research International's London-based parent.With Research International, Rouse intends to survey hundreds of thousands of customers and gain insight into their shopping desires and needs.

Migliara/Kaplan Associates of Owings Mills, a consulting firm for health and drug companies on marketing, announced yesterday that it will build a second headquarters building to accommodate its staff, which has grown 60 percent in the last 18 months.The three-story, 40,000-square-foot building, across the street from a 20,000-square-foot building on Park Center Court, will house about 75 employees and will be ready by fall, Barbara S. Kaplan, director of marketing, said.Migliara/Kaplan has about 150 employees -- 125 in Owings Mills and the rest in Princeton, N.J. Others will be joining in the next few months, Kaplan said, and already some are housed in temporary space.

Migliara/Kaplan Associates, a health-care market research firm in Owings Mills, has been purchased by NFO Research of Greenwich, Conn., a general market research company.There are no plans to move any of Migliara/Kaplan's 70 employees in Owings Mills and 12 employees in New Jersey, a company spokeswoman said.Sixteen of the 20 largest pharmaceutical firms in the country are among the clients of the 15-year-old Migliara/Kaplan, which specializes in market research for new product development.

Adler Group plans expansionThe Adler Group Inc. plans to expand its relocation magazine business and real estate journal publications into major East Coast markets on the heels of the sale of its Apartment Shoppers Guide publications in Baltimore, Washington and Detroit.The Silver Spring publishing concern, which publishes the Corridor Real Estate Journal and the Metro Baltimore New Homes Monthly, sold the apartment publications to Haas Publishing, a division of K-111 Communications whose publications include New York magazine, Seventeen and New Woman.

Forget the Partnership for Peace. Eastern Europe is being vanquished by that greatest of all conquerors: Love.Harlequin romances, so long a staple of the American night stand, have stormed into these ex-communist nations and are amassing loyal troops.In the former Czechoslovakia, 5 million readers a month -- or nearly three-quarters of the female population -- pick up a book by Harlequin, the Canada-based leader in formula romances. Each of the 500,000 sweet nothings Harlequin sells here every 30 days finds its way into 10 sets of hands; in some towns, a single book may be devoured by as many as 80 insatiable women.

Pay attention to the market. Listen to your customers. Spend megabucks collecting customer information, to the point that you can treat even mass-market customers as individual "market segments."Not only are these the trendy ideas of the past decade, but their proponents (myself sometimes among them) are getting louder and louder.Why, then, was I so taken with -- and so disturbed by -- the story of Milanese clothing and accessories designer Miuccia Prada, profiled by Ingrid Sischy in The New Yorker?

Get ready for more free samples in the mailbox, unfamiliar products at the supermarket and market researchers on the telephone.American Demographics, an influential magazine in the market-research industry, has declared that the Baltimore metropolitan area is first in something, after all. It seems folks hereabouts have the most all-American set of values and other "psychographic" characteristics of any metro area in the country.And that ought to make it one of the most-surveyed and most-test-marketed metropolitan areas in the United States, instead of what it has always been -- the most-ignored by market researchers -- the magazine says in its July issue.

For many years, Columbia's developers have sat on the sidelines and watched as they lost business to retail centers in Laurel, Catonsville and Glen Burnie.Market research showed Columbia's residents traveling to these far-flung places in search of bargains. Not in the habit of creating business to compete with its Columbia Mall, the Rouse Co. nonetheless was losing out on a lucrative market phenomenon -- the rise of discount centers and warehouse stores.No longer.The Rouse Co. is now poised as a contender in this new venue, with a major discount center in Howard County bounded by Snowden River Parkway and Dobbin Road.

For years, Columbia's developers have sat on the sidelines and watched as they lost business to retail centers in Laurel, Catonsville and Glen Burnie.Market research showed Columbia's residents traveling to these far-flung places in search of bargains. Not in the habit of creating business to compete with its Columbia Mall, the Rouse Co. nonetheless was losing out on a lucrative market phenomenon -- the rise of discount centers and warehouse stores.No longer. The Rouse Co. is poised as a contender in this new venue, with a major discount center bounded by Snowden River Parkway and Dobbin Road.

Houston. THE RECENT budget imbroglio cost the Oval Office, the Senate and the House dearly; the electorate -- weeks before elections -- was put off by an unseemly squabble in which no one seemed to know what he wanted and the participants continuously shifted ground. The government, in fact, came perilously close to breaking down and while the budget season has always been noted for partisan fireworks, nothing quite like this volcanic upheaval had eventuated before.The cause of this wretched spectacle may be buried somewhere in the pages of a remarkable book by Alvin Toffler -- ''Power Shift'' -- continuing the explorations of a world to come he started in ''Future Shock'' and ''The Third Wave.

HCC to sponsor job fair March 28 In cooperation with the Howard County Chamber of Commerce, Howard Community College will sponsor its Spring Job/Career Fair from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 28 in the college's Burrill Galleria. Representatives of companies and government agencies will discuss job opportunities, accept applications and schedule interviews. Job-seekers can take their resumes for review by the college's career counselors and will be able to gain access the HCC Jobs Online database to find job postings.

BlackSand CEO to be at luncheon Kellyann Davis, chief executive officer of BlackSand Research, will headline the Business Women's Network of Howard County luncheon from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. March 19 at That's Amore restaurant, 10400 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia. The theme of the luncheon is "Competitive Intelligence, the Second Oldest Profession." Davis will explain what competitive intelligence is, as well as how to find and use it. Davis has more than 15 years of experience in market research and holds a patent for developing a system that measures confidence levels for intelligence provided to companies.

Imagine a television set so thin that you could roll it up and carry it in your briefcase. It's not as far off as you might think. The Sony Corp. is now selling a futuristic TV in Japan that is only about an eighth of an inch thick - that's one notch on a tailor's tape measure. The new television sets, which began arriving in Japanese stores this month, have an 11-inch screen and cost 200,000 yen (almost $1,800), said Jon Reilly, a product marketing manager at Sony Electronics. The sets replace the bulky backlighting of typical LCD televisions with a thin film that glows with colors even when viewed from the side.

I am Lost in Carbonation. You may have seen me wandering the beverage aisle of your local grocery store mumbling about simpler times when there were just a half-dozen types of sodas. There are so many subtle distinctions within products of even the same brands that I now fear I'll make a mistake and take home some swill that turns even my closest friends against me. For example, C2, Coca-Cola Co.'s reduced-carb, reduced-calorie cola introduced last summer at a cost of $50 million, is a super hip drink.

Douglas Gordon Lovell, a Maryland-born pharmaceutical executive who named the popular pain reliever Tylenol while he was market research director at McNeil Laboratories, died of complications from Parkinson's disease Monday at a nursing home in Devon, Pa. He was 76. Born in Garrison at his family's estate, Robinswood, now the site of the Garrison Forest School campus, he attended St. Paul's School and was a graduate of Calvert School. He earned his undergraduate degree at Yale University, and a master's from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON - When AIDS suddenly appeared, it took more than two years to discover the virus that caused it. It took five months to identify the bacterium that caused Legionnaire's disease, and just as long to track down the viral source of New Mexico's hantavirus outbreak a decade ago. This year, it took but a month to isolate and identify the virus responsible for the explosion of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, advancing the timetable for...

Roger S. Sennott, a market research executive and former sociology professor who spent his teen years in the Towson area, died of leukemia Sept. 12 at a San Diego hospital. He was 58 and lived in La Mesa, Calif. Born in Staten Island, N.Y., he moved to the Old Hillendale neighborhood in Baltimore County with his family in 1958 and graduated from Towson High School in 1962. He took up golf as a 10-year-old, and won the Baltimore Junior Golf Championship in 1961 and 1962. He earned his bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University in 1966, and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.

The Rev. Harry Brunett believes he has designed a ministry that would appeal to people who are dissatisfied with organized religion. But he doesn't want to rely on belief alone. So the Howard County Episcopal minister is test-marketing the idea, using surveys, prototype services and focus groups to make sure his idea works and to help fine-tune it. Religion and market research might seem like the oddest of odd couples, but churches are increasingly market-sensitive - using tools common for developing cereal - to help them with matters of faith.

Dear Martha: A surprising thing has happened. While you've gotten older and plumper -- more matronly, really, although you still look great, don't get me wrong -- you've developed an unexpected audience: young, hip girls. I don't know if it's a national trend, although it could be from what the market research people tell me. But in Baltimore, Martha rules. Well, not exactly. There are plenty of teen-age girls around here, I'm sure, who think that spending more than two seconds figuring out a creative way to sort and store ribbons is a really ridiculous waste of time.

The Rouse Co. unveiled yesterday a partnership with a New York research company that will give consumer product companies access to its malls and customers.The alliance with Research International USA aims to generate millions of dollars in revenue for the Columbia-based mall developer and provide Rouse with continually updated information and market data about its customers, building on a similar link Rouse made in April with WPP Group PLC, Research International's London-based parent.With Research International, Rouse intends to survey hundreds of thousands of customers and gain insight into their shopping desires and needs.