ADVERTISING RESEARCH

We have to understand what makes the consumers buy. We will have to find out whether the right audience watches our sponsored programme. What is the effect of ad on sales? These are the questions which advertiser faces everyday. While deciding about such questions, advertisers need inputs of some research. Mostly they rely on Marketing research (MR) which is systematic collection, processing and interpretation of data regarding any problem of marketing ranging from product, distribution, price and promotion to customers, markets and forecasting. Marketing research includes advertising research and media research.

SCOPE OF MEDIA RESEARCH 

Media research is used to find solutions to any problems of marketing. Media research for the purpose of advertising and other marketing decisions generally cover the following areas.

1. Advertising Research 

2. Product Research 

3. Consumer research 

4. Sales Research

5. Corporate research

WHY RESEARCH?

Research makes advertising more efficient and effective.

DATA FOR RESEARCH

Research is based on data. These are basic facts, figures and ideas. When organized in a meaningful way, it becomes information. Data collected for the first time is called primary data. Whereas the secondary data are already available and published data collected for some other purpose. A research project requires both the types of data.

TYPES OF RESEARCH

Research is put into three broad categories. We must first know what we should investigate. We must define the problem correctly. That could lead to further research.

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Research sequence is as given here. 

1st Define the problem and set the research goal 

2nd Identify source of data 

3rd Analyze Secondary Data

4th Identify the Sample

5th Collect Data 

6th Analyze the Data and Present the results.

PROBLEM DEFINITION AND RESEARCH GOALS

Some typical research goals are: 

1. To measure awareness about our product in the target audience after 2 months campaign

2. To assess attitudes of consumers to rival products so as to know their brand’s vulnerable points

3. To assess which ad concept is more effective out of the two developed. 

SOURCES OF INFORMATION 

We can collect our data from our internal records, library, directories, literature etc. 

Primary data can be collected by our own research department or by an outside research agency.

Analysis of secondary data

This step consists in analyzing the secondary data to throw light on the problem on hand. 

Identification of sample: 

The sample must be representative of the overall population. There are two categories of samples. 

Probability sample provides a chance of being included to all members of the population. Simple random sample is an example. Here each member of population has an equal chance of being included in the sample. Another probability sample is a stratified sample in which a population is put into several strata e.g. doctors are put into GPs. Specialists, surgeon categories. 

Non probability sample does not give a chance of being included to all members of the population. For many problems sample data need not be projected to the entire data population. The quality of the research depends upon the selection of the sample.

DATA COLLECTION

Data can be collected either by a quantitative or qualitative technique. Quantitative data put responses in numbers and statistics. They answer questions like how many, how much and how often. Qualitative research looks for in depth answers beyond the realm of quantitative research. It examines attitude, motivation and behaviour. Depth interviews are used to allow people to open up and reveal their attitudes and opinion.. Focus group is a group of respondents who is subjected to probing

questions. Projective techniques provide an opportunity to provide answers to vague questions by rationalizing.

DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULT PRESENTATION

Whatever data we collect from the sample is not in a usable form. These data must be processed. They must be then analyzed and interpreted. Several techniques are available for analysis of data. Tabulation is a useful technique at this stage.

RESEARCH APPLICATION

Advertisers use research to know the right thing to do, to know the right way to do it and to assess whether our ads were effective. Research can be used in each of the following three stages.

OPPORTUNITIES AND GOALS 

Advertising research helps us understand where we stand currently. And what our marketing opportunities are, based on this, we can set our goals, Research covers in the scope consumer behaviour, segmentation, positioning, product research, brand awareness, attitudes, perceptions and psychographic profiles.

Such studies let us know our strengths, weakness and competitive advantages. While assessing opportunities and setting goals, we can make use of perceptual map which positions products on two dimensions or attributes.

PLANS AND MESSAGES

Market analysis and positioning research were the first applications of research for advertising. Once we set our advertising goals, we can design an advertising programme or campaign.

ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS 

Once the ad campaign is run, we do post testing of the ads. When such studies are conducted over a period of time, they are called tracking studies. In post testing we test communication effectiveness by recall test.

RESEARCH QUALITY

Research quality is a result of systematic research design, expertise and judgment. 

Research quality is tested against the criteria of reliability. 

Reliability means that even if the research is repeated, it shows the same results. 

Validity means research measures what it purports to measure. 

What affects the reliability and validity of research? 

There are five set of factors

faulty research design, 

sampling errors, 

faulty questionnaire, 

and wrong interpretation of answers. 

When research is commenced, the researcher must have an open mind. He otherwise, might try to interpret the research data the way he holds his beliefs.

CONSUMER RESEARCH

Even while doing product – led answers research, the focus should be on consumer. Our USP and positioning should be consumer- driven. It is also necessary to redefine the research function to make customer segmentation effective.

INDIAN MARKET RESEARCH SCENE

In 1960 an audit research was set up in India. In 1983, a custom researcher MARG was set up in India. ORG and MARG merged together in 1997 to gain leadership of the Indian market research industry. In 2000, the Netherlands –based VNU takes over ORG-MARG. In 2001, VNU takes over audit major AC Neilson World wide. CAN-ORG-MARG is India’s sole supplier of retail audit data.

MARKETING AND ADVERTISING PLANNING

The company generates sales only through marketing, and as such it is the most important plan. This plan contains information about four important aspects of the organization. An organization’s advertising plan is drawn from its marketing plan. It also decides the allocation of advertising budget.

ELEMENTS OF THE MARKETING PLAN:

1. The situation analysis: Here the organization’s current situation is considered and is related to its past activities.

2. The marketing objectives: The objectives flow from the company’s current situation and management vision of the future.

3. The marketing strategy: It spells out how a company plans to realize its marketing objectives. Objectives lead to strategies. In the marketing strategy, we have to select the target market, determine the marketing mix for this market, and position the product in each market, and

4. The action plan.

BRANDING POSITIONING: Positioning is a creative exercise which starts with a product. Positioning is not what you do the product but it is what you do to the mind of the prospect. The shortest route to the heart is through the mind. Positioning may lead to cosmetic changes in the product’s name, price and packaging but far more important is the psychological positioning of potential products. The consumers mentally rank the products in their mind, along one or more than one dimensions. The consumers tend to remember number one.

MEANING OF THE PRODUCT POSITIONING: Product positioning is an attempt to create and maintain in the mind of the target audience the intended image for the product, relative to other brands so that the target audience perceives the product as possessing the attributes they want. There are two sides of the positioning.

(a) Market Positioning: There are three steps of Marketing Positioning.

1. Explore the market

2. Segmentation-Targeting

3. Competitive Strategy

(b) Psychological Positioning: It is a communication exercise that follows AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) Model.

PERCEPTUAL MAPPING FOR POSITIONING: Perceptual Space Map (PSM) shows the perceived relative positioning of products along different dimensions. The attributes or dimensions of a product are identified by qualitative research like depth interviews. Statistical techniques are used to reduce a very large number of dimensions to a few significant dimensions.

ADVERTISING AND POSITIONING: According to George A. Miller, Harvard psychologist, the average person can rarely name more than seven brands. The set of that the consumer has in his mind during the purchasing process is called “evoked set”. This is where the positioning comes in. advertising has to establish the brand in a commanding position in the mindsets of consumers. The image and appeals must be related to the way consumers possibly think about a brand and thus position it in their mind.

RESEARCH FOR POSITIONING: Positioning research starts with the study of the market to identify the factors, which are most important to various users of the product category. First, investigate what the consumers do with the products. Secondly, attitudinal information should be developed according to the purpose for which the brand is to be used and not just for any two brands. Thirdly, it is important to ask why a brand or a product is not being used. Fourthly, it is important to identify the existing brands where they are placed in the consumer’s mind. Lastly, positioning is creative. It helped by complete information. The position of a brand is the perception it brings about in the mind of the target consumers.

BRAND PERSONALITY: Brand image is broader than brand personality because by the time we enter the personality realm; we are dealing with feelings and emotions that the consumer takes away from communication. A well-established brand has a clear brand personality. Closely positioned brands may also acquire distinct personalities as a result of exposure to the product, packaging, service, word - of- mouth and advertising.

Brand personality should not be confused with the description of target audience. Brands are much like people. They have certain physical characteristics, certain skills and abilities and certain associations and attitudes. The brands therefore, appeal to senses, to reason and to emotions.

ADVERTISING PLAN: Advertising plan sets out the advertising objectives and advertising strategy along with details about messages design and media plans, sales promotion and event management tie-up. It also considers the advertising budget, and schedule.

ADVERTISING OBJECTIVES: advertising is expected to improve sales but the effects of advertising on sales are not measurable precisely. Many other factors simultaneously influence sales. Sales objectives are relevant in the context of advertising only.

(i)             Advertising is the only variable in the marketing equation

(ii)           Advertising is a predominant element of the marketing mix

(iii)          Advertising is supposed to generate an instant response

HIERARCHY OF EFFECTS: It is based on the assumptions that people first learn something from advertising. Later they develop feeling for it and are finally led to action. This sequence is called cognitive-affective-action sequence. The various stages in this sequence are awareness, comprehension, conviction, desire and action.

DAGMAR APPROACH: Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results, where to establish an explicit link between ad goals and ad results colley distinguished 52 advertising goals that might be used with respect to a single advertisement, a year’s campaign for a product or a company’s entire advertising philosophy. The goals may pertain to sales, imagine, attitude, and awareness.

According to DAGMAR approach, the communication task of the brand is to gain

(a) awareness

(b) comprehension

(c) conviction

(d) image

(e) action

Thus DAGMAR treats an advertising goal as a communication task, to be achieved among a defined audience in a given period of time.

ADVERTISING STRATEGY: It is basically a blend of the advertising message and the communications media. While do so, it also considers the target audience and the product concept.. Advertising message spells out what the company plans to say.

ALLOCATING FUNDS FOR ADVERTISING: It drives both the marketing and advertising plan. Advertising must justify the expenditure it makes. Advertising is an investment in future sales. As sales are affected by a variety of factors including advertising, it is difficult to determine allocation of funds. Before making allocations, the business environment is considered in its totality. A number of methods like,

Affordability method, Percentage-of –sales method, competitive method, objective and task method etc. are used to determine how much to spend on advertising.

ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN: It is used to mean organized and planned use of advertising for accomplishing a definite purpose. A campaign is a co-coordinative effort of promotion of a particular product/service during a particular period of time to attain pre- decided objective. Buyers are forgetful, often due to a clutter of large number of advertising messages; they over look several of them. It is therefore better to approach them in the form of a campaign. The factors, which affect the duration of campaign, are the type of product offered, the nature of advertiser’s marketing programme, seasonality of sales, media policies and the competitor’s advertising, and the geographical spread of a campaign can be the basis.

CAMPAIGN PLANNING: The basis of any campaign is the consumer behaviour and the market profile. The demographic and the psychographic study of consumers constituting a market is a must to create advertisements for the right target audience with the right type of appeals. Media planning is the selection of appropriate media or a combination of media for placement of advertisements. The points to be kept in mind while planning an advertisement are, Identify the Problem, The Budget, Pre-Testing, Target Audience, Media Selection, The language, The Visual and the Copy, Timing and Duration, Post –Testing and Effect on Sales.

WHY TO PLAN CAMPAIGN:

(i)             To determine the market and its potential

(ii)           To obtain the consumer profile

(iii)          To study the consumer psychology

(iv)          To know the frequency or size of buying

(v)            To decide about the channels and their satisfactory operation

(vi)          To bring about the product modification

(vii)         To determine the geographical scope of the campaign

(viii)       To do the media planning

(ix)          To determine the fundamental human desire to which the advertisement will appeal

(x)           To determine the scheduling and space buying.

BASIS OF CAMPAIGN PLANNING:

The three-word recipe for a good campaign as given by Sir William Crawford is Concentration, Domination, and Repetition.

THREE PHASES OF CAMPAIGN CREATION: There are three phases involved in the creation of any campaign:

1. Strategy development

2. The Briefing Phase

3. The creative Phase

FUNDAMENTALS OF ADVERTISING

Advertising is present everywhere. The television, newspaper and magazines bring it to our residence, the hoardings and kiosks stare us out-of-door, the trade journals and professional magazines find place in our offices. We hear ad messages on FM frequency while driving our favorite car from home to office and back. It is a matter of deep satisfaction that advertising has now acquired respectability deserved by it. Advertising talks to a very wide audience. Hence it is called mass communication, as against the individual communication such as letter or the talk of a salesman. Advertising is one way to promote products and services. It is thus a part of promotion. In marketing, we have to establish a relationship between a brand and our consumer. Advertising helps to establish this relationship. Advertising though contested, has spread all over the world because it works. Companies have realized that it pays to advertise.

ADVERTISING WORLD: 

Earlier, advertising was confined to announcements, and its role did not go beyond informing. Even today, many advertisements are created just to inform. e.g., classified. These days advertising is regarded as any paid form of nonpersonal communication, of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor.

Advertising is of various forms. It can be a sign or symbol or illustration or message. As advertising is non-personal and thus excludes any face to face communication. Advertising is openly paid for by an identified sponsor. Advertising just tries to influence the behaviour of the target audience.

Definition of advertising: Advertising is one of the important forces which serve the public interest. It is a form of open communication between those sell and those who buy. It is a form of advocacy open to any company or cause that wants to argue its case. The jury is the public. Every purchase is a Vote.(Burt Manning, JWT ).

Advertising and communication: Though advertising is used as a part of marketing mix, basically it is a communication process. The aim of this communication is to improve sales or make the customers aware of our products. The customers for whom the message is meant are the receivers. As advertising makes the receivers favorably inclined towards the product, it is called marketing communication. Since the message is put through the mass media for a large number of people, it is mass communication. Advertiser has to identify exactly who his customers are, where they are, and why they behave the way they do. He has to understand his target audience to be effective. The way the target audience reacts to the message is feed back.

STAGES IN ADVERTISING COMMUNICATION: 

It is informative and persuasive. It guides the consumers to take action. The whole process of marketing has a large content of communication. Marketing communication is thus a broader term. But the most important element of marketing communication is the promotional mix which is also called communication mix. Marketing communication is the process of sending promotional messages. It is called the AIDA stages of communication where A stands for attracting attention, I for rousing interest, D for building a desire and A for obtaining action. Advertising, as a communication strategy, has to perform the first three functions, only direct action advertising leads to action of buying. 

Another communication model gives six stages, 

1. Awareness 

2. Comprehension 

3. Acceptance 

4. Ownership

5. Reinforcement 

6. Purchase

The continuum is called hierarchy of effects. The first stage of attention is cognitive stage the interest and desire stages are affective stages and the final action is the behaviour stage. We assume that the audience member passes through sequential steps and is called hierarchy-of-effects model.

INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION (IMC): 

We find that marketing communication gives the customers a fragmented and hazy picture. It happens because there is no integration amongst marketing efforts on the one hand and the communication efforts on the other. IMC makes a single minded focused communication. Its consistency and cost effectiveness are its main merits. There are separate direct marketing and PR functionaries. It involves two major dimensions_ consistency of positioning, message and tone across these different media and simultaneous achievement of several specific communication goal and leading to behavioral action.

DRAMATIC CHANGES IN BRAND COMMUNICATION: 

This model is highly simplistic. Consumers do not meekly accept everything directed towards them, they challenge the proposition and sometimes even dispute it. They can interpret, modify or reject brand messages. The consumers also form their opinions about the brands in a number of ways.

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING: 

Marketing is the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of products which satisfy the customers. Advertising as a tool of marketing is employed to highlight the benefits of these products. However, advertising never determines how a product will be designed, how it will be distributed and at what price. The decision about product, distribution and pricing must be made before advertising is allowed to play its role. Marketing has to keep the needs and wants of consumers in focus. It has to assess these needs through marketing research.

MARKETING MIX: 

Product, Price, Place (distribution) and Promotion, these four variables make the marketing mix. Marketing has to have different permutations and combinations of these four Ps to achieve consumer’s satisfaction.

Product: A product can be a physical product or a service. It includes all the accessories that go with a product. It is something that offers value to the customer by making available the benefits to satisfy the needs and wants. To distinguish from the competitive products they are converted into brands, packaging a brand suitably is also a marketing task. 

Price: Price is the value offered in exchange of products in terms of money. Price covers the cost of manufacturing, office and administration, distribution, promotion as well as markup over costs which is called profit. 

Distribution: The movement of products from the producer to the customer is called distribution. And it is made possible by using a marketing channel. Physical distribution involves transportation, warehousing, and inventory management. 

Promotion: Advertising is used along with personal selling, public relations, direct marketing, and sales promotion. Direct marketing is selling direct to the customers either by direct mail, or telephone or TV ads.

ADVERTISING WORLD: 

It consists of organizations that put the advertising messages through advertising agencies in different media. They have their own advertising departments who interact with the advertising agencies which conceive and execute a campaign on their behalf.

TYPES OF ADVERTISING: 

The ads are classified on the basis of their targeting, geographic selectivity, media selectivity and advertising objectives.

TARGET AUDIENCE: Advertising is directed to a particular group of consumers. Industrial advertising is directed to institutions and other business organizations. Trade advertising is directed to the distributors, retailers as well as wholesalers. And professional advertising is directed to the professionals like CAs, Doctors, and Engineers etc.

GEOGRAPHIC COVERAGE: Those firms who do business on a global basis prepare international ads; firms having business on all India basis do national advertising, whereas regional advertising is restricted to regions only. Retailers do local advertising.

MEDIA USED: Advertising is in through the Print Media, Electronic Media, Hoardings, posters are the outdoor advertising, ads on buses trains are transit ads when advertisers contact the buyers directly it is direct marketing.

AIMS: Advertising can be classified depending on its objectives. Product advertising aims to stimulate the sales of products. Non product advertising aims to create a favorable image of the organization as a whole. It is alternatively known as institutional or corporate advertising. Advertising can also be used for non business purposes e.g. anti- dowry campaign.

FUNCTIONS OF ADVERTISING: Informs the buyers about the existence of the products, its features, benefits and availability and incentive to buy. Advertising provokes us to try the product, and once tried reminds us to buy again. Advertising builds brands, gives an image and personality to the brand, while working with other elements of marketing mix create brand equity. Advertising helps us to choose the brand out of several brands available. Advertising persuades people to act.

Liberal Professor Durgesh Gupta

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