B547: Transparent Plastic Cartons Boost Egg Sales

In merchandising tests conducted in three supermarkets located in Portland, Maine, sales of large, Grade A eggs were increased an average of 16 per cent using transparent plastic egg cartons. Total eggs sales in the stores were increased 11 per cent. The experiment involved testing two types of egg cartons—a completely transparent carton made of clear plastic, and a windowed carton with partial visibility through the top of the carton. A standard 2 x 6, cardboard carton with no visibility—the one regularly used by the supermarkets—was used as a control throughout the tests. In two of the cooperating stores egg sales per 100 customers in the plastic carton exceeded those in the carton regularly used in the stores by 25 and 26 per cent. In the other store the sale of eggs in plastic cartons per 100 customers was less than sales in the regular carton by 7 per cent. Overall egg sales in the windowed cartons were slightly less than those in the regular solid top carton. The findings from this study indicate that consumers preferred eggs in transparent cartons which allow complete visibility of the entire contents of the package, and that the use of transparent cartons for displaying eggs in supermarkets resulted in increased egg sales in the short-run. Transparent cartons are available now at a cost which would permit retailers to use them for marketing a premium quality egg, and for promoting egg sales in their stores.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1029/thumbnail.jp

B537: Supermarket Sales of Poultry Meat

Shoppers\u27 purchases of poultry meat were observed and recorded daily in four supermarkets located in Portland, Maine, over a two-month period, May and June, 1952. One month was spent in each of the two stores. To learn something of the seasonal pattern of consumers\u27 purchases of poultry meat, observations were made again during November in the same supermarkets. The study revealed, among other things, that chicken was the biggest item in the poultry products line, that supermarkets sold more broilers and fryers than any other type of poultry meat, and that they were losing poultry sales by not having a complete line of poultry available to customers during the entire week.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1034/thumbnail.jp

B536: Consumer Poultry Meat Studies in the Northeast

In 1953, the subcommittee of the Northeast Regional Poultry Marketing Committee, considering the project Consumer Preferences for, Consumer Purchases of, and the Market Demand for Poultry Products, decided to bring together in summary form the work completed and under way by research workers in the Northeast. The project was designed to address revolutionary changes in the poultry industry that had made it in increasingly important that the production and distribution of poultry meat and eggs be oriented to consumer preferences and market demand for these products.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1047/thumbnail.jp

Innovation of a Reinforcer Preference Assessment with the Difficult to Test

In this study, we continued evaluation of a two-choice preference assessment aimed at identifying a hierarchy of reinforcers for individuals with only one voluntary motor sequence—closing and releasing an adaptive switch. We assessed preferences among types of sensory stimulation in 6 adults with multiple profound impairments using concurrent synchronous reinforcement contingencies. Pre-experimental assessments with various types of stimulation led to the selection of music (A), vibration (B), and either olfactory or visual stimulation (C) as the 3 modalities for continued testing. Each participant received opportunities for familiarization with each type of stimulation in blocks of six 20-min sessions in which the closure of an adaptive switch produced the stimulation for as long as the switch remained closed. Next, participants could choose between pairs of types of stimulation in blocks of 12 sessions. In the first 6 of the 12 sessions, switch closure activated one type (e.g., A) and switch release activated the contrasted type (e.g., B). In the second 6 sessions, the contingencies were reversed. Two additional 12-session blocks completed all possible contrasts (AB, BC and AC). Four of the 6 participants showed distinct preferences in these two-choice tests with indications of preference hierarchies. The results demonstrate a method for obtaining indications of relative preference for potentially reinforcing stimuli from individuals without communication and without the abilities to act on more than one switch

Teaching Individuals to Signal for Assistance in a Timely Manner

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Saunders, M. D., & Saunders, R. R. (2012). Teaching Individuals to Signal for Assistance in a Timely Manner. Behavioral Interventions : Theory & Practice in Residential & Community-Based Clinical Programs, 27(4), 10.1002/bin.1346. http://doi.org/10.1002/bin.1346, which has been published in final form at doi.org/10.1002/bin.1346. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-ArchivingThe study describes the adaptive-switch performances of 8 adults with severe multiple impairments. Each was given a series of progressively more difficult discrimination tasks that, if solved, would require the participant to close the switch to activate a device that was not operating or to stay away from the switch if the device was operating. Then in a 2-choice format, a preference test was conducted by providing 2 devices simultaneously that could be activated or deactivated by closure or release of the switch. Finally, a preferred device was activated and then surreptitiously deactivated. Switch closures in this contingency activated a speech-generating device that played the message, “Help me.” All 8 participants learned to control devices using their adaptive switch, but only 4 participants learned to make a request for help. Reasons for the different performances across learners and nonlearners are discussed

Encouraged by a Little Progress: Voting Rights and the Contests over Social Place and Civil Society in Tennessee\u27s Fayette and Haywood Counties, 1958-1964

Between 1958 and 1964 the citizens of black-majority populations in adjoining West Tennessee counties struggled to claim and exercise citizens\u27 rights to participate in civil society. Voting rights activism amon the black community was answered with an economic embargo conducted by county officials and the busines community. Voting rights were the fracture point in civic society as both counties made the change from tenant to mechanized agriculture and wrestled over the civil and economic position of a no-longer-necessary laboring population. This study examines voter registration as a catalyst of socioeconomic change and social discourse in rural America. During the 1960s traditional plantation agriculture and sharecropping collapsed for good under the weight of postwar economic modernization, civic awareness among the black poulace, and the inability to provide a defensible legal argument for traditional segregation against challenges by federal liberalism. Chapters examine the general economic and social setting prior to 1958 and social assumptions in dependency/paternalism relationships, including the stated and unstated concept of place in these stratified societies; the awakening and assertion of civic participation among the black populace and why voting challenged well-established dependency/paternalism relationships; tactics of economic repression adipted to coerce registered voters to leave the county or return to dependence; the role of federal investigators and the Justice Department in combating segregation and replacing one form of liberalism with another; the efforts and results of activists from outside Tennessee; and the range of responses among the white communities. Includes a timeline of the local conflict (1940-2012) as an appendix. This work argues that the political challenge over voting in these two counties represented fundamental opposing perspectives and differing interpretations of the nature of rights within the public sphere. Racism and segregation involves abstract views about the fundamental way American civil society is constructed, for which color served as a convenient marker

B571: Contract Broiler Growing in Maine

The Maine broiler industry had its beginning in the late 1920s and early 1930s with the greatest development occurring after World War II. Live poultry buyers, who later became processors, were the originators of the industry and have played the leading role in its development. Processing and broiler production along with hatching egg production and hatchery operations are vertically integrated to a relatively high degree in Maine. Broiler production in Maine has continued to increase at a more rapid rate than broiler production in the entire United States. By 1957 broiler production in Maine had reached 50 million birds which amounted to 3.5 per cent of total U. S. broiler production, making Maine the 10th ranking broiler state. The findings from this study of contract broiler growing in Maine indicate that carefully planned, vertical integration by processors is a sound method of cost reduction and quality control. Furthermore, contract broiler growers generally are satisfied with their arrangements for growing broilers and prefer the contract system to growing broilers independently.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1032/thumbnail.jp