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Improved retail decisions can result from attempts to measure customer response to price, display, store layout, and other controllable variables. In this article, the author shows how the combination of entrance interviews and direct observation can provide management with more meaningful information from the study of customer in-store behavior.

Variables determining the role of husband and wife in family financial management are explored based on in-home, personal interviews. Financial tasks reflecting implementation activities and two groupings of decision activities were related to component-score variables through discriminant function analysis. Sex-role attitude and educational level were most important in determining the role structure of implementation tasks. Locus of control, wife's working status and reasons for work, and a measure of family life cycle were each significant in determining role structure for a grouping of decision tasks.H igh interest rates, inflationary pressures, and the gradual deregulation of financial institutions have created an environment in which family financial management has assumed great significance. Families' modifications of financial behaviors and adoptions of new practices are evident in the acceptance of new financial services and changes in the mix of savings and investment options favored by consumers. Yet little is known about the family processes underlying these changes.The roles of husbands and wives in savings and money management are the focus of the study reported here. Research is justified not only because the behavior itself is changing rapidly, but because there is reason to believe that earlier conceptualizations of role structures for all types of family decisions may no longer be valid. Later marriage, decreasing family size, changes in wives' employment status and reasons for employment, and changing attitudes of both men and women toward proper roles for husbands and wives all challenge predictions based upon earlier research (Roberts 1981). EARLIER RESEARCHPreviously published studies have had several deficiencies: respondents often have been drawn from narrow and specialized populations; researchers have relied upon responses from a single spouse; financial management has been defined on only one or a limited number of dimensions; and variations found among responding families have been left unexplained or related to only one or two demographic variables. These studies can be classified into three

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