laboratory tests of advertising effect

Definition:
Advertising researchers sometimes borrow the hardware of experimental psychology to measure the effect of advertisements or package designs on test subjects under laboratory conditions. The research companies often take potential users of their services to 'a perception laboratory where they can peer into boxes, have electrodes stuck to them, twiddle dials, press knobs and generally enjoy themselves . . . (but) how useful are these machines?' (Mark Lovell and Jack Potter, Assessing the Effectiveness of Advertising, 1975). Four well known laboratory tests use physiological indicators of arousal as a surrogate for interest or involvement as a criterion of advertising effectiveness the psychogalvanometer, which measures sweating in the palms; the pupilometer, which records dilation and contraction of the pupil; the blink-rate meter; the polygraph, which simultaneously records heart-rate, respiration and sweating. Three more measure perceptual activity or acuity. The eye camera (or eye-movement camera) tests interest/involvement directly by recording the amount of time spent looking at various elements of the object in the field of vision, such as the pages of a magazine. The tachistoscope (or T-scope) and variometer measure the threshold of interest/involvement, the first by exposing the stimulus for increasingly larger fractions of a second until elements are recognized, the second by slowly improving very low light levels until recognition occurs. In all three cases it could probably be argued that nothing more than attention, a lower-level response, is being proved. Finally, a set of four devices provides direct measurement of interest/involvement, indicated by the test subjects themselves. These are the ASI Interest Dial, the Alpha Quiz Chair, CONPAAD (conjugately programmed analysis of advertising) and Sync. They are all specialities of commercial research agencies. The physiological tests are cheat-proof, a point in their favour. Respondents may react atypically under laboratory conditions, but can hardly produce a particular reaction at will. However, neither these nor the perceptual tests were purpose-made for the testing of advertisements or packaging, and they suffer in practice from the serious difficulty of knowing how to interpret the observations. The perceptual and direct-reaction tests may be susceptible to distortion by 'reactivity' on the part of the test subject. All procedures are costly, because of the need for trained experts to supervise them. In the light of these many drawbacks, it is perhaps as well that British advertising practitioners seem mostly sceptical about the value of laboratory tests for measuring effectiveness, despite the obvious enthusiasm of advertising textbooks for describing them in detail.

Cross-References:
[advertising testing]

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