ADV 205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Thematic Apperception Test, Word Association
Chapter 6:
Consumers & Communications
● Account Planners: Represent consumers in the advertising process
Advertising Research
● Advertising Strategy Research: (product concept / target selection / message selection /
media selection)
○ Target Audience Analysis (message selection)
■ General consumer trends
● What changes can be seen in consumer lifestyles
■ Product Specific Analyses
● What are the characteristics of the consumers?
● How do we examine these groups?
● What are the opportunities within each segment?
■ Message Selection
■ Media Research
● Competitive media
● Where can we get our message seen?
● What media should be used?
● Creative Concept Research: After Ad strategy developed ➝ Test creative concepts
○ Steps in the Research Process:
1. Analyze situation & define problem (situation analysis)
○ What are the industry trends?
○ What is the competitive environment?
○ Who are the category leaders?
○ How are others positioned? How are we positioned?
○ Identify others’ advertising strategies?
2. Conduct informal (exploratory) research
○ Data is the key to knowing the customer. Knowledge is obtained
from two basic kinds of sources
■ Secondary Research: Collected for another purpose by
someone else
● E.g. library reference, government publications,
databases, etc.
■ Primary Research: Collected for a specific purpose by
person with problem
● Primary research suppliers: A.C. Nielsen, Simmons
Market Research Bureau (SMRB), Mediamark
Research Inc. (MRI)
3. Establish Objective
