Evaluating Communication Effects of Advertising - Pretesting – Posting.
Effectiveness of
Advertisement and Its Evaluation
Advertisement is a costly affair, but very seldom
serious attempts are made to judge how far it is effective, how many benefits
the costs of advertisement yield, how the benefits, if any, are related to
advertisement and so as. Till recently, the effectiveness of advertisement has
been measured in relation to sales. This is what is known as quantitative way
of measurement.
This measurement emphasises whether an
advertisement was acceptable to consumers and whether they digested it and
remembered it. This is known as “stimulus response function”. There is no
dispute about the fact that the most objective way of measuring an
advertisement is through sales. Sales in turn are influenced by complexity of
forces which fall into qualitative type of advertisements.
Therefore,
the measurement of quality is an indicator of the index of the quantitative
type of measurements. The advertisement should first appeal, that is, it should
stimulate the demand for a particular type of the product. Only then can some
results be expected from it. The success of an advertisement can be analysed
only with the help of some survey data relating to consumer response and sales.
Evaluation
of Advertising Effectiveness:
Good
planning and control of advertising depend critically on measures of
advertising effectiveness.
Test can be classified as:
(1) Pre-testing, and
(2) Post-testing.
(1) Pre-testing:
It means testing the potentiality of a message or
copy before send to specific media.
There are three types of pre-testing and they are:
(i) Questionnaire-answer:
The draft of an advertisement along with some
relevant questions is sent to a group of target consumers or advertising
experts and their opinions are collected and analysed to find out whether the
proposed advertisement is satisfactory or not.
(ii) Recall:
A group of respondents is shown a number of
alternative advertisement drafts giving as much time as they want to read them.
After the specified time, they are asked to recall them and to reproduce them
as much as they can. The responses are analysed to find out how far the
advertisements are impressive, which ones are more impressive and so on and so
forth.
(iii) Reactions:
The potential effect of an advertisement may be
judged with the help of certain instruments which measure heart beats, blood
pressure, pupil dilution such as stethoscope, psychogalvanometer, eye
observation camera, etc. These reactions provide case to its power to get
attention and produce other psychological or nervous effects.
(2) Post-testing:
After an advertisement has appeared tests may be
undertaken to judge:
(i) The impact of communication, and
(ii) The ultimate results in the form of sales.
(i) Communication Impact:
There are two methods used for this purpose and
they are:
(i) Recall, and
(ii) Recognition.
(i) Recall:
Regular users of the related medium may be asked if
they can recall a specific advertisement, including the name of the advertiser
and the products referred to and if so, how much of the advertisement they can
play back. Their responses are studied and graded to see how far the advertisement
was successful in attracting notice or being retained.
(ii) Recognition:
In this case, a particular issue of a medium is
shown page by page to a sample of its readers and they are asked to point out
which advertisements they recognize as having seen and or on the basis of the
replies, evaluation is made of the receptiveness of the advertisement.
(ii) Sales Method Test:
Advertising’s sale effect is generally harder to
measure than communication effect. Sales are influenced by many factors besides
advertising, such as the product’s features, price, availability and competitor’s
actions. Sales impact is easier to measure in direct marketing and hardest to
measure in brand or corporate image-building advertising.
Two different methods are generally used for this
purpose and they are:
(i) Historical method, and
(ii) Experimental method.
(i) Historical Method:
In this method part sales are analysed in relation
to past advertisement either on current or lagged basis. If an advertisement
has been followed up with more sales it is considered to be more effective.
(ii) Experimental Method:
In this method the entire sales territory is
divided into three or four sub areas, more or less on the basis of some uniform
criteria. In one group, an advertisement is inserted involving a certain
amount. In another group; the amount is doubled; in the third it is tripled; in
the fourth, it is quadrupled (different percentage of sales for advertisement).
The results in the form of sales are measured and compared with a view to
finding out the impact of increased advertising effort.
Importance of Evaluation of the Effectiveness of
Advertising:
The importance of evaluation of the effectiveness
of advertising is listed below:
(i) It is generally opined that much of advertising
expenditure is wasteful. Proper evaluation would help in finding out whether it
is really wasteful and if so, how much of it is so.
(ii) Evaluation reveals the strengths and
weaknesses of different media and thus provides useful guidance for future
media planning.
(iii) Through suitable methods, the draft of a
message or a copy can be tested beforehand so that preventive steps may be
adopted and waste reduced.
(iv) The whole process of evaluation leads to a
body of recorded experience which may be useful not only to the improvement of advertising
but also to better planning.
(v) Evaluation shows not only which advertisements
are less productive but why they are so. So, it indicates the sources for
greater effectiveness.
Difficulties in the Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Advertising:
There are many difficulties in the evaluation of
the effectiveness of advertising and they are:
(i) Good researchers who can successfully measure
the impact of advertising are difficult to get.
(ii) It is difficult to say how much increase in advertising
resulted in how much rise in sales.
(iii) The primary aim of advertising is to increase
sales. But it cannot be concluded that the entire increase has been due to
advertising. In reality, many factors influence sales, advertising is just one
of them.
(iv) Advertising has many goals, one of them is to
build goodwill. But measurement of goodwill is not possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment