THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAND USAGE AND ADVERTISING TRACKING MEASUREMENTS - INTERNATIONAL FINDINGS

Research often explores the impact that advertising has on consumers. What it does far less, however, is explore the impact of what's alread y in consumers' minds on advertising. In this paper, we explore the im pact that consumers' prior psychological relationships with brands hav e on their interpretation of advertising. We show that the response of consumers who are committed to a brand differs significantly from tha t of those who are uncommitted. Similarly, nonconsumers of a brand who are close to switching to the brand differ in their response to adver tising from those who are unavailable for switching. The results of ou r studies suggest that norm-based approaches to advertising evaluation are fundamentally flawed, unless they take consumer brand relationshi ps into account.