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4. Limitations of Marketing Research Frankly
Confessed
Let others make the case for us. Stephen Fajen is media
director of Saatchi & Saatchi Compton, in New York. In a brief piece
in Advertising Age, he expressed with biting wit his obvious sense of
frustration;
Recently I reviewed a media plan. It was pretty
simple - After ID-ing the target with demos and geos, it was refined
with Clusterplus, VALS and a group of psychos. Then we looked at the
reco.
An adequate number of occasions were scheduled on
the three nets. We even fed some occasions because
of a copy split test. We maximized our recall adjusted
GRPs as much as possible. While we still can't measure
CA's, our AA's held up well (as simulated on the MAGIC
run off NTI data). R's and F's were high enough. with
a decent FDE, especially at a 3+ level.
And so on, for several more mind-spinning paragraphs of
jargon. Then he concludes poignantly:
In other words, we executed a plan that should work.
There are however two remaining, rather important questions;
1. "Does everyone understand everything we are talking
about?"
2. "Will this plan help sell more product?"'
Good questions especially the second one - And that's just
media. Look at what marketers have to wrestle with in copy research, as
related by Stanley E. Moldovan, director of creative research at SSC&B
Lintas Worldwide:
When we began to think about our own copy-test procedure,
there were a variety of what Shirley Young had called "magic numbers"
that we could have used: everything from "basal skin response, brain
waves, eye movement, pupil dilation, and physical activity: unaided
and aided recall score, noting scores, copy-point recall, visual and
slogan recall; interest and attitudes toward the brand. product attributes
and benefits. buying intentions, coupon redemption, and simulated
sales response.
We could have used a number of different research
designs: pre-post versus post only, single versus multiple exposure,
project able versus non project able samples and natural exposure
versus forced exposure.
Forced Exposure could have been varied: in-home,
theater, trailers or mail situations. We could have tested individually
or in groups. We could have tried to attempt to simulate a natural
setting by introducing distracting or competitive advertising, program
material, or simply gone straightforward.
And still the question hangs in the air: "Will this plan
help sell more product?"
We simply want to emphasize traditional marketing research
often goes to great lengths to measure irrelevant things, including people's
opinions about advertising or their memories of it, rather than their
actions as a result of it.
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