Not many researchers started as copywriters. And few of these can be as lucid about research as is the following paper. An historical and practical review of advertising theories sets the scene. It reminds us that methods which worked in one environment may not succeed in another. Hence perhaps the need for successive and even contradictory theories: when one style gets so copied that it becomes ordinary, another takes its place. As in all the arts, âAstonish me,â is a sound criterion. The Fishbein model has not had the wide application which, on this showing, it deserves. Perhaps the difficulties of measurement, of putting numbers on the qualities which are its constituent parts, are too great. But in the hands of a sensitive and practical believer the ideas are convincing. In the seminar opened by this paper, Translating advanced advertising theories into research reality, a number of important comments were made. The whole seminar should be read in order to understand why the way advertising works is more complex than Mary Tuck claims. Joyce (1971) is particularly worth reading for a wider viewpoint, as well as Bruce (1971) and Cowling (1971) for supporting this type of model about how people behave. Fishbein (1971) himself said that he was surprised that his theory had received the attention of practical businessmen. He also pointed out the real differences in the way even professionals use such terms as belief, attitude, intention and importance. He supports - as some do not - the principle that models should be employed only as long as they are useful.
We had hoped in this written paper to give you full details of how research helped us to solve a given advertising problem. What we have decided to do is to outline in this paper the general structure of the problem we had to solve. The research we are to discuss was devised to help determine creative strategy for a branded frozen product.
This paper reviews the methods commonly used by market or commercial researchers to investigate the underlying motivations or determinants of choice. It comments on their validity and their suitability to social planning research. It is argued that social planning research has limited itself too frequently to factual information gathering and could usefully employ some of the techniques common in the commercial field. Reference is made to data currently being gathered and analysed concerned with recruitment to the army and decisions to remain in the army.
Some people make a distinction between "advertising theories" and "research models". I am not going to do that. I am interested in theories of persuasion and behaviour which underly both advertising planning and market research. One of the aims of this paper will be to demonstrate the constant interaction between advertising and research theories. The kind of research done depends on what theories of advertising are current; the kind of advertising fashionable depends at least partly on the kind of research information available. My own experience has been very much within the English advertising world. So I am going to centre my discussion on what has been going on in London in the past decade or so.
The author comments some of the main points raised in the papers on Fishbein Theory.
I do not wish to comment on Timothy Joyce's paper at length, but there are several points at which he misrepresents Fishbein theory, and I would like to comment on two of these.
The relationship of attitudes to behaviour remains a problematic area for social psychology and commercial research. This paper reports on a recent model of their relationship proposed by Professor Martin Fishbein of Illinois, which seems particularly suggestive for commercial research purposes. After a brief discussion of the Fishbein theory of attitude construction and measurement, a case study is presented which shows the value of the attitude measurements proposed for commercial research. The Fishboin theory of the relationship of attitudes to behaviour is then discussed and some evidence from case study is presented to show how the theory can be operationalised in the commercial field. The Fishbein 'method offers a means not only for discovering what are the consumer's clusters of beliefs, norms, attitudes about the product but also of understanding the structure of norms and attitudes and their relative importance in controlling behavioural intentions and behaviour.