MEMRIČ Glossary

Standard Product Categories

Over half of the categories in the MRI database contain user and volume data.  These categories are referred to in MEMRI as "Standard Product Categories".  Each category contains codes for:

• Total Users in the past six months or past year
• Total Heavy, Medium, and Light users in that time period
• Total Users of various volumes of the category (regardless of brand)
• Users who used only one brand, one type, one kind, or one form of product in the category
• Primary users of each brand, type, kind, and form (people who used it most often)
• Secondary users of each brand, type, kind, and form (people who used it in addition to a different primary)
• The volume of each brand, type, kind, and form (Doublebase Only)

MEMRI and MEMRIČ have automatic code generation features for Standard Product Categories.

What makes a category a "Standard Category" tends to be subjective.  In order to be formatted this way, a category should be made of items that:

• are used or consumed in discrete and countable units
• are used on a regular basis by the people who use the product at all
• are expended at different rates by different people (to make "Heavy", "Medium", and "Light" users)
• have multiple, well-known, and competitive brands and/or types that perform essentially the same function

The time period used for volumes is typically smaller than that used for category and brand users.  For example:

• Motor Oil: Twelve Months/Twelve Months
• Disposable Lighters: Six Months/Six Months
• Alcoholic Beverages: Six Months/One month
• Toothpaste: Six Months/One Week
• Coffee: Six Months/Average Day)

Product categories from the "Homemaker" section of the questionnaire should be considered to represent the entire household.  For example, select a database and select "Population" weighting (where respondents are multiplied by the number of people they represent).  If you enter "Barbecue sauce", MEMRIČ will return will be the number of "people who live in households where barbecue sauce is used". 

• To select the people who are responsible for purchasing the product, select "Population" weighting and use a base of "Homemakers".
• Otherwise, homemaker products should be selected with "Household" weighting. 
• If you want to use brand or category volumes from these categories, be sure to open the database with "Household" weighting and use a base of "All".  Do not use a homemaker base in conjunction with household weighting.

Non-Standard Product Categories

Categories not formatted as Standard Product Categories, such as cars, travel, media, .  This also includes categories from databases other than Mediamark Research.

Label Cell

The colored cells along the left and top sides of Crosstabulation and Cost Ranking Spreadsheets.  In these cells you can:

• Right-click for a list of features, such as Recall/Save Definition files, Autocoding, Copy/Paste, Add Code, Combine Cells, etc.
• Double-click for a coding panel to create or modify complex codes
• Type an English Language Synonym or Card-Column-Punch code which MEMRI 2 will automatically recognize.  If it doesn't recognize it, it will open the coding panel mentioned above with what you typed as the label.

In Cost Ranking, row Label Cells can only contain media.   Double-clicking on one of these cells will give you the list of available media for selection.  Columns in Cost Ranking behave as shown above.  For more information, see Cost Ranking.

Card*Column-Punch Codes

A carry-over from the days of IBM Punch Card databases, each respondent is represented by anywhere from 1 to over 250 cards with 80 columns (01-80) of 12 punches each (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,x,y).  Each punch represents either a "Yes/No" relationship ("Yes, I own a car", "No, I don't own a Porsche"), or is part of a volumetric value.  These "codes" are listed in the codebook for the database you are using, and/or are available through the electronic codebook.  Although codes are typically listed with stars and dashes to denote the three values, they are left out when typing them into MEMRI 2.  For example, 124*78-1 would be typed "124781".  Cards are always from 1-3 digits, columns are always 2 digits, and punches are always a single digit.

Volumetric codes are handled differently, depending on the database.

• In MRI databases, they are represented by a single column (i.e. "163*62").  These require one of two special functions, dvol(CardColumn) or brange(CardColumn)range.  Use dvol to get the total volume consumed by whatever demographic you are crossing the dvol with.  Use brange to select people who used a given range of volumes, such as "5", "3-5", or "6+".  For the code shown above, "dvol(16362)" in the row would give you the total volume answered by people in the column, and "brange(16362)3-6" would give you people who answered from 3, 4, 5, or 6.
  
• In other databases, volumetric codes are given as a range of columns (i.e. "14*12-15").  These require a different pair of special functions that perform the same functions: rvol(1st CardColumn,number of columns) and range(1st CardColumn,number of columns)range.  In the above example, you would code "rvol(1412,4)" to get total volume and "range(1412,4)3+" to get people who used 3 or more.

For more information on volumetric codes and entering codes into MEMRI 2, see Advanced Coding.

Studies/Databases, Weight Factors/Public Weights

Studies & Databases are synonymous terms for sets of files that contain the responses by people to a survey in a given time period.  Databases that MEMRI 2 supports come from a variety of research companies, such as MRI, JD Power, Monroe Mendelsohn Research, etc.

Shown here is the list of available databases that appears when you press [Select Database/Study] from the MEMRI 2 main menu.  The [Add], [Change], [Delete], and [Move...] buttons let you manipulate the list of databases.  If a database that is available on the MEMRI data CD does not appear in the list shown above, press [Add] and select the database vendor, season, and year of the database you want to use.  If the list of available years, seasons, or vendors appears inaccurate, you can download the current database list by clicking here.

Weight Factors

From here, you can select the database you want to use and how you want the respondents weighted.  In some databases, respondents can represent different population units.  For example, in 1998 Fall MRI, you can weight the respondents to the US population in thousands or hundreds, US households in thousands (each respondent represents a household instead of the individual people in it), or weight a single six month wave to the total US population. 

Note that different weight factors can change the meanings of the answers.    For example, if you select "Household (000)", then questions that pertain to an individual should not be used.  These include personal demographics, media exposure, health & beauty aids, travel, beverages, leisure activities, etc.  Questions that pertain to the household include household demographics (HHI, Census Region), Head of Household and Homemaker demographics, Automobiles (but not decision maker codes), computers, tools, and questions answered by the principal shopper.

File Extensions

MEMRI 2 uses several different kinds of files.  These files have three letter extensions to denote their contents:

".MRI" These are specification save files.  They contain everything needed for MEMRI 2 to re-open from outside of MEMRI 2 to the point at which they were saved.  For example, if they were saved at the main menu with a database selected, they would re-open to the main menu.  They can be saved from any of the utility programs, Crosstab, or Cost Ranking.  Note that user rates entered into Cost Ranking are not saved.

These files augment existing database files:

• ".MDU" Contains all of the user defined media created in Media Builder (Prototypes, Composites, Scales, etc.)
• ".MDG" An MDU file placed in the LanPath and shared among all users in the network
• ".CRU" Contains user entered magazine circulation counts modified in Circulation Builder.
• ".USY" Contains user defined English Language Synonyms entered in Synonym Builder.

In all of the following, "??" represents the "signature" of the current database.  Typically, this is the first letter and last digit of the database.  For example, Fall 98 MRI's signature is "8F", and 1997 MMR's is "M8".  MEMRI 2 will automatically save and search for files with the current database's signature.

• ".??D", ".??M"  Demographic (".??D") and Media (".??M") definition files that only work in the database that created them
• ".??V"  N-Tile, Count, and Summary code files created in N-Tiles
• ".??W"  User defined universes created in Universe Builder

File Locations

MEMRI 2 uses different files in different locations:

See File Extensions for more information.