Advertising Research

This chapter gives an overview of conducting research in the field of advertising. Research is very vital for any business entity and companies. But when it comes to creative field like advertising research plays a significant role in producing creative content that instantly grab the attention of its incidence. Creativity is the heart of advertising while research is the backbone of advertising. Without appropriate research, even creativity also fails. Advertising promotes products and brands to increase sales of the advertised products or brands. Without proper research, it is difficult to achieve advertising goals and objectives. Research helps to understand the nature of potential target consumers very well. It is extremely needed to identify prospective consumers and to understand their buying behaviour. What influence them to prefer one product over the other product of the same category? The answer to this question lies in research. Research is also important to evaluate the effectiveness of the ad. It is also vital to find out the result of the efforts put into the advertising campaign. Advertisers spend a lot of money on advertising every year. Because of this, it is important to evaluate how well the advertising copy and the final ad work to influence consumers and get a good response to the advertised products. Marketers have a firm belief that the process of advertising that is not backed by research activities is a waste of time and effort. Research activities in advertising are usually performed by advertising agencies on the demand of their clients. There is an individual department that only deals in research activities about planning, preparation, placement and evaluation of advertising campaigns. In this chapter, we are going to learn about the basics of advertising research and what techniques and methods are involved in advertising research. This chapter's objective is to provide both theoretical and practical knowledge of advertising research. A case study of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) (Save daughter, educate daughter.) advertising campaign is provided at the end of the chapter to demonstrate how post-test research in advertising is conducted.