Advertising Pre-Testing in Simulated Test Marketing

Abstract:     
Advertising pre-testing (or copy testing) is often employed in sales forecasting. It helps to quantify the impact of advertising on generating awareness, trial and repeat purchases. This paper reviews existing copy testing practices and makes some practical recommendations in the context of simulated test marketing (STM), one of the most validated sales forecasting techniques for new products.

The paper demonstrates that in an STM study, advertising can be evaluated using a relatively narrow range of metrics, such as brand recall, branded ‘memorability,’ liking, main point communication, ‘new news’ or uniqueness, ‘interest’ or relevance, and ‘purchase intent.’ It also shows how to estimate awareness uplift due to creativity in advertising and provides some empirical evidence from an emerging market.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 20

Keywords: Simulated test marketing, STM, advertising effectiveness, pre-testing, copy testing, new product development, sales forecasting, emerging markets, BASES, Designor, Novaction, Russia

JEL Classification: C42,C53,C22, C23,M37, M30, M31

working papers series