Studying the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and various approaches to promoting goods to the consumer market is the main line of work for psychologies studying the psychology of consumer demand. The simplest way is to ask people how they react to advertising. Do they feel a desire to buy the product being advertised? Do they trust the advertisement? Which of the two advertisements of the same product seems more interesting? It is important for respondents to form a representative sample of the portion of population targeted by the product. One can hardly expect useful results if a preliminary test of baby food advertising is conducted by polling single man and elderly women.
Facilitating recollection. The most popular way to determine the effectiveness of advertising is the technique of facilitating recollection. It is used to determine how well a person can recall the advertisement.
Usually, on the day immediately following the publication of an advertisement in a magazine, on television or radio, a group of consumers is asked whether they have read the magazine, watched TV or listened to the radio broadcast that included this advertisement. If the answer is affirmative, the respondent is asked to tell everything they can recall. To simplify the recollection process for respondents, the interviewer is asking leading questions. But even if the person remembers the advertisement well, this does not signify willingness to buy what is being advertised.
Recognition. Another way to determine advertising effectiveness is the recognition technique. Persons who have read the magazine or viewed the TV broadcast are offered copies of advertisements and asked questions relating to it.
Did consumers recognize the advertisement or remember where they saw it? Did they remember the product name? How did they understand the meaning of the advertisement? Unfortunately, people can say that they saw the advertisement even if they in fact did not. When researchers showed the respondents copies of advertisements that had yet to appear in the mass media, some of the respondents were positive they had already seen them. Comparison of the two techniques (facilitation of recollection and recognition) indicates that recognition is a more sensitive tool for measuring the degree to which advertisements are remembered.
Physiological measurements. Since TV ads are created to evoke an emotional response from viewers, physiological measurement of viewer emotions is an effective way to assess the impact of advertising. This statement is corroborated by research results. 49 adults (25 women and 24 men) spent 20-30 seconds watching advertisements of various consumer goods and services, including cars, soft drinks, food products, cosmetics, movies, and telecom services. The test participants used ratings to assess the appeal of each advertisements and the intensity of emotions evoked by it (e.g., satisfaction). After 4 days, all test participants were tested using the recognition technique.