Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness Through Advertising Response Modeling (ARM)

As important as evaluative copy testing measures like recall, idea communication and persuasion are for much advertising, questions exist about whether they assess the full communication value of a commercial or ad and how to interpret the sometimes conflicting information that these multiple measures yield. Presented here is a new modeling technique, Advertising Response Modeling (ARM), that integrates several measures in use today in a meaningful way, and through its application can lead to a better understanding of how the advertising performs. A pair of nonalcoholic beverage ad tests are used to demonstrate how ARM can add to the traditional copy test results and offer insight and a fuller understanding of the advertising process. Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness Through Advertising Response Modeling (ARM) It is well accepted today that in evaluating advertising effectiveness, multiple measures are required; no single measure is adequate. The recent ARF Validity study further endorsed the use of multiple measures (Haley and Baldinger, 1991). The inclusion of need for several measures in current copy research systems reflects the need to capture the various dimensions of persuasion. Consequently, researchers today are evaluating advertising performance on a variety of measures including memory-based intrusiveness levels of recall or recognition, brand rating, advertising liking, buying interest or intention, as well as diagnostics related to the advertised product or service and advertising execution. It is, however, not clear which of these measures are more appropriate under certain conditions, or even how they relate to each other. The even greater challenge is in interpreting the sometimes conflicting results. Advertising Response Modeling (ARM) is an attempt to provide a framework to assess advertising performance by means of integrating several measures. Based on past research on how advertising works, a conceptual model is derived which lends itself to empirical applications in a variety of advertising situations to help fully understand the processing of the advertising in question. Its application allows going beyond mere descriptives and helps evaluate if the advertising being tested fulfills the marketing communications objectives set for it. Results of the modeling provide information for actionable decision making. Although it is well recognized that an audience actively participates in the advertising process by going beyond the messages presented in the advertising itself and drawing conclusions about the brand, this inference process has received little attention in commercial copy testing. Understanding how the advertising was actually processed should help identify the strengths and weaknesses in the advertising. Application of ARM in copy testing is designed to do that. Specifically, the objectives of the present paper are to: (1) Present a conceptual model of ARM; and (2) Demonstrate through a case study how ARM adds insight gained towards a fuller understanding of the advertising process. ARM: Conceptual Model Researchers for the last five decades have attempted to understand how advertising works. From the early learning theories of persuasion (Hovland, Janis, and Kelly, 1953; McGuire, 1972) and the hierarchy of effects model, including Dagmar (Colley, 1961), to the more recent Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM, Petty & Cacioppo, 1981, 1986), the extensive work on effects of ad attitudes on ad performance (Baker & Lutz, 1987; Batra & Ray, 1984; Mackenzie, Lutz, & Belch, 1986; Mackenzie & Lutz, 1989; Muehling, Stoltman, & Mishra, 1990; Muehling, Laczniak, & Stoltman, 1991), and the ARF Validity Study (Haley & Baldinger, 1991), various pieces of the advertising effectiveness puzzle have been addressed. Based on these advances, and G&R's own empirical research, the Advertising Response Model (ARM) has been delineated (See Mehta, 1994). As Figure 1 shows, and consistent with past research, an ad must first break through the clutter and gain attention. If the advertising captures attention, processing occurs along one or both routes: central and peripheral (Petty and Cacioppo, 1981, 1986). During central processing, the focus is on product and/or brand-related information, while ad/commercial-related issues are more dominant during peripheral processing. Figure 1 Advertising Response Model (ARM) Conceptual Model COMMUNICATION PROCESSING C E N T R A L Product/ Brand Related Advertising Related Advertising Exposure Attention Brand Attitude/ Brand Rating Advertising Liking/ Advertising Attitude Buying Interest/ Buying Intention