Abstract:

Consumer Panels are well situated to play an important part in the problems of evaluating advertising and promotional expenditures for consumer products, by measuring the effect they have on purchasing behaviour: A) They measure consumer purchasing behaviour accurately and sensitively; B) They measure this behaviour on a continuous basis, and this is important because the effect of advertising and promotion needs to be observed over time preferably in the same consumer sample; C) They also measure some of the principal ingredients in the advertising/promotional mix; they can measure exposure on the part of the consumers to press and TV advertising (and to radio and cinema also) and they can determine when purchases are made involving promotions (most types of promotions, at any rate) Despite all these advantages, however, the resulting measurement of the relationship between advertising/promotion and consumer purchases can be elusive and even when successfully measured is often difficult to interpret as an indicator of future action. Why this should be, and the type of measurements available from Consumer Panels are discussed in the next sections.