This paper presents the results of the last in a series of surveys entitled Qualitaten der Fernsehwerbung, which describes in general terms the effective mechanisms of TV advertising in relation to actual exposure and uses this to derive media planning recommendations.
The paper describes a proprietary modeling process which has been used to isolate advertising effects of a short-term nature and to document long-term effects. Many of the findings of this work are congruent with the findings of John Philip Jones, particularly the clear-cut ad effects in the week of exposure. However, this model makes use of standard household panel data rather than the "single source" data used in Jones analysis and unlike Jones, offers a concrete mechanism for examining long-term effects.
A small-scale UK survey among leading advertisers and agencies to find out what research they conduct to evaluate their advertising campaigns is reported upon. The amount of such work was found to be surprisingly high but the amount of effort devoted to attempting to build generalisations was disappointedly low. Without such generalisations there can be no learning for the future. Developing this point, reference is made to an issue which is topical in the UK, namely the value of the low exposure to television campaigns received by Light Viewers. Material from two recently developed series of checks to evaluate campaigns is quoted to illustrate the potential of attempting to build generalisations, and also some of the dangers.
In this presentation, we have tried to see the usual applications of operations research in the marketing field. This field is in quick evolution. Among the most promising uses, we can cite: - the decision theory applied to operations with technical and commercial risks which escape from probability laws - the integrated systems of control and predictive planning in advertising and marketing fields that will probably give a new statute to test markets - investigation of the exposure concept (advertising and commercial) and the notion of response curve of a market versus exposures (consumers - advertising, sales promotion) (retailers - agents visits) - the behaviour studies of households in the consumer panels by statistical observations which will permit to simulate the market attitudes in relation with the launching strategy of the products. Those scientific approaches will be developed if the marketing executives are trained to take the best of a better organisation.
The classic two-step hypothesis was rejected by its creators. Subsequent studies have demonstrated shortcomings in the data on which the hypothesis was based. For one thing, the dichotomy of opinion leaders and followers was shown to be unfortunate because the 'followers' proved to comprise two very different categories - information seekers and initiatives. The Marknadssociologen study abandoned this dichotomous definition and exploited the seeking and advising activities instead. The finding of a strong positive correlation between these two activities demolished one of the corner-stones of the two-step hypothesis. One and the same person was in fact frequently an opinion leader and a follower. It was also found that topically active persons were also high on both topical exposure to advertising and topical personal communication. The dynamic multilateral hypothesis indicated that "shared interest seems to be a channel through which communications flow". Interest proved to be a suitable variable for defining the target group for a message, because interest is strongly correlated with both seeking and advising activity. Interest has been used in practice to define the persons who are likely to disseminate the message most effectively, the persons who fill the same function as the classic opinion leaders.