Answer: Descriptive role
Step-by-step explanation:
From the question, the Johnsonville Sausage Company wants to know the areas of the country eat the most sausage. Johnsonville Sausage Company just wants factual information about the areas that eat sausages the most and is not interested in an explanation for how popular sausage is in the region shows that the company is using market research for it's descriptive role.
Marketing research is the set of processes which links the producers and, customers through information that is used to identify marketing opportunities, monitor marketing performance and also improve understanding of the market. For the descriptive role in marketing research, companies are just interested in facts without really going into a detailed explanation.