HIGH POINT, N.C., June 4, 2015 – Research published by High Point University’s Dr. Jennifer Burton, assistant professor of marketing, could help advertisers create more effective advertisements by understanding how individual consumers react to their content.
An article describing Burton’s research, “How Do Consumers Respond to Storylines in Television Advertisements? A Principal Components Analysis Tool Helps Decipher Moment-to-Moment Evaluations,” was recently published in the Journal of Advertising Research, one of the top academic journals in marketing and advertising.
Burton and researchers from the University of Texas at Austin applied a new technique in their analysis of consumers’ reactions to the storylines of 46 Super Bowl ads and found a more effective way of measuring consumer response than the method advertisers have used for decades.
“Advertisers have been collecting and analyzing consumers’ moment-to-moment emotional reactions to advertisements since the 1980s. However, they have been using a very simplistic approach,” Burton explains. “Advertisers have simply been averaging consumer responses and looking at the averaged graph of moment-to-moment evaluations to determine whether an ad will be successful. Our research introduces a new approach that focuses on the individual as the unit of analysis.”
Instead of aggregating the moment-to-moment data, which can hide or mask important insights about consumer responses, Burton’s approach looks at how individual consumers react to various parts of a commercial. The technique helps advertisers know what moments of the ad create adverse reactions from consumers and enables them to change those parts before launching their campaign. It also allows advertisers to see whether various types of consumers –identified by age, gender or brand loyalty, for example – respond positively or negatively to the storylines. Burton says this manner of analyzing the data can be used to better predict the success of the ads companies create.
“This approach allows advertisers to better produce content that resonates with their target audience,” Burton says. “It also results in better advertising appearing in the various media people consume.”