HOW TV-ADVERTISING WORKS - A METAANALYSIS OF 389 REAL-WORLD SPLIT CABLE TV-ADVERTISING EXPERIMENTS

The authors analyze results of 389 BEHAVIORSCAN(R) matched household, consumer panel, split cable, real world T.V. advertising weight, and c opy tests, Additionally, study sponsors-packaged goods advertisers, T. V. networks, and advertising agencies-filled out questionnaires on 140 of the tests, which could test common beliefs about how T.V. advertis ing works, to evaluate strategic, media, and copy variables unavailabl e from the BEHAVIORSCAN(R) results. Although some of the variables did indeed identify T.V. advertising that positively affected Sales, many of the variables did not differentiate among the sales effects of dif ferent advertising treatments. For example, increasing advertising bud gets in relation to competitors does not increase sales in general. Ho wever, changing brand, copy, and media strategy in categories with man y purchase occasions in which in-store merchandising is low increases the likelihood of T.V. advertising positively affecting sales. The aut hors' data do not show a strong relationship between standard recall a nd persuasion copy test measures and sales effectiveness. The data als o suggest different variable formulations for choice and market respon se models that include advertising.