When it comes to advertising research the methods are endless. There are so many ways that marketers can research advertising from simply observing consumers to lengthy tests. Researching advertising is the main way that advertisements have evolved. Pre-testing which can also be known as copy testing, is a form of research that predicts the performance of an advertisement and its success in the real world before it airs to the public. Pre-testing analyzes attention, brand loyalty motivation, communication between consumers and weather it is entertaining or informational. This for of research also breaks down the ads flow of attention and emotions the consumers will feel when seeing the ad. Measuring the attention level is extremely important when it comes to pre-testing. This data collected tells us what parts of the ad consumers look it and which parts of the ad they ignore. Pre-testing can be extremely helpful for ads that are still rough drafts. It can tell us what else we need to put in the ad and what aspects of the ad need to be removed.
Another form of marketing research is called post-testing. Post-testing provide either intervals or continuous research in the market. They monitor a brand’s performance, including brand awareness, brand preference, product usage and attitudes consumers have towards the products and services. Some post-testing approaches track changes over time. It’s an easy way to tell the popularity of a product over a certain period of time. Another method is a campaign, which is much larger and hands-on with the consumers. Mainly advertisers use post-testing to plan future advertising campaigns, so the approaches that provide the most detailed information on the accomplishments of the campaign are the ones that are typically used the most. There are two main typed of post-testing campaigns. The first is continuous tracking. In continuous tracking is when the changes in advertising spending and compared to changes in brand awareness. Usually with these studies they will use the same group of people over a long period of time to track the changes.
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| This shows some of the information on poverty we can obtain from a census report |
All of these methods I have talked about are known as field methods. The other form of research methods is the desk method. The desk method involves documents from past studies and books written by experts on the matter. When engaging in the desk method you take many different test results on a similar brand or product and compare them. The results from twenty years ago to date can be extremely helpful. This data can tell you how consumers needs and wants have changed. As technology and the way we live changed so do our wants and needs. As we find out what consumers needs and wants are now we can more heavily advertise towards those needs and wants. Many popular documents that researches use are government documents such has census reports, bulletins on labor and commerce and governments income reports. All of these can tell use how things over time have changed.
The census reports alone can tell us so many things. In a census we can learn all age groups living in an area, nationalities, and income of all the people in one town. Once we learn that we can then know if we need to advertise towards children or the elderly, African American or Mexican, and wealthy and poor. Those are just to name a few. If the census report has a high amount of children then for example, we can more heavily advertise products geared towards children on the local stations and in newspapers and magazines. Not only can we advertise to children themselves, but we then know weather to advertise children’s products towards the parents for products that children are not as interested in directly, like children’s vitamins.
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| This is an example of an ad for Children's vitamins geared towards parents. |
Advertising would not be what it is today without the research that has gone into it. You can say that advertising is one of the most innovative and ever changing businesses in our world today, next to technology. Advertising relates directly to the needs and wants of the consumers, and by studying the consumers over time we can tell how we need to approach our ads, and how we want to speak to the consumers.
Sources:
http://www.google.com/images
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1015078
Consumer Behavior 3 student edition
Babin/Harris
Cengage.com
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