Journal of Marketing Research

A widespread hypothesis in advertising is that a “hierarchy of effects” follows upon an individual's perception of an advertising message and before he buys (Attention→Interest→Desire→Action). Published empirical evidence on this is examined first; then two sets of commercial research data are analyzed statistically. The emphasis is on sales as the relevant criterion; little support is found for the hypothesis.

Most leading international advertisers, agencies and research firms take a pragmatic approach to the problem of transferring successful U.S. advertising campaigns to foreign markets, with the final decision based principally on market, cultural and media factors.

Specific multivariate statistical techniques, such as factor analysis and discriminatory analysis, are finding increasing application in marketing research investigations. Canonical analysis, a less well-known multivariate technique, is an appropriate procedure to use when sets of criterion and predictor variables are to be correlated. This article describes the objective of canonical analysis, its relationship to other multivariate techniques and the major limitations of the method. The procedure is applied to a problem involving the relationship of certain behavioral measures to personality test scores.

The physician uses, selectively, both commercial and scientific sources of information about drugs. Commercial sources are the predominant ones in making physicians aware of new drugs. However, information from both commercial and scientific sources plays a part in the physician's decision to prescribe a drug, and scientific sources become increasingly important as the condition which is to be treated becomes more severe, or as the treatment becomes less clear-cut.

Most empirical work on Markov processes for brand choice has been based on aggregative data. This article explores the validity of the crucial assumption that underlies such analyses, i.e., that all the families in the sample follow a Markov process with the same or similar transition probability matrices. The results show that there is a great deal of diversity among families’ switching processes, and that many of them are of zero rather than first order.

The rise in interviewing costs has been a major concern to users of survey research. This article suggests methods for controlling field expenditures based on experiments at the National Opinion Research Center and the Census Bureau. In addition, a new method for paying interviewers is outlined, based on the controls which are developed.

Results of two laboratory experiments indicate that the number of choices involved in a purchase decision influences the consumer's decision process. The Taylor experiment suggests that as the number of items involved in the decision increases, the consumer becomes less sensitive to changes in these items. The Anderson experiment suggests that consumers will experience a greater degree of dissonance reduction, the greater the number of items in the decision.

The exploratory study reported here attempts to identify if and how informal social groups influence the brand preferences of their members. The results suggest, first, that consumers are influenced by such groups and second, that the extent and degree of brand loyalty behavior within a group is more closely related to the behavior of the informal leader than to the cohesiveness of the group.

Paired comparison taste tests usually do not distinguish between discriminators and nondiscriminators. Often this is necessary, particularly when formulations are similar and preferences are close. One approach to the problem, that of a double preference test, and several implications are discussed and illustrated.

The empirical data presented here add to the evidence concerning how individuals in an institution perceive their responsibilities. In particular, they demonstrate considerable disparity between how a group of purchasing agents see themselves and how others in a firm see them.

In analyzing continuous consumer panels for making marketing decisions, one must make some assumptions about how accurately the panel represents the total population of consumers. Yet very little work has been published on the representativeness of consumer panels. This article deals with a limited aspect of the problem: the effect of the length of time consumers have been in the panel on their purchasing characteristics. Tentative hypotheses are formulated on the basis of some empirical data and suggestions for future studies are given.

This note summarizes the writer's experience over a two-year period with 14 industrial and consumer mail surveys. Several suggestions are offered for increasing the rate of return on mail questionnaires, including a friendly cover letter and a short questionnaire.