Broadcasting (Jan - Jun 1944)

I Broadcasting's Impact on the Listener 1UCH misunderstanding of the ffectiveness of radio programs exIts in the industry. Many adverisers appear to believe that in orer to have any sales effectiveness program must create a "conscius impression" on the listener. The importance of the problem 5 enhanced by the well-known and >ell-developed human capacity for nentally "tuning out" sounds which ire of no immediate interest. The idief that a "conscious impression" s essential to the modification of >ehavior is based on the assumpion that man is a purely rational tnimal. The belief is, therefore, [uite groundless. If it is necessary o produce a "conscious impres;ion" in order to influence a lisener, it follows that listeners to program who are not aware of he name of the sponsor should use ,he brand no more than do non-liseners. That no such consciousness 's essential to program effectiveless is demonstrated by the results shown in Table XIII. Use of Product It will be seen from the table that n the case of each program the use pf the product is much greater in lomes that listen to the program 3ut do not identify the product advertised than it is in non-listening lomes. These results are representative jf the conditions found for most programs. In the case of Program B, the use of the product is found to be only a little less among nonidentifiers than among identifiers. However, in the experience of the present writers there has been no case where the non-identifiers completely equalled the identifiers in use of the product. It is clear from ■ these findings that a program's effectiveness in influencing the behavior of listeners is quite independent of any "conscious impression". While it is true that listeners who identify the sponsor are influenced to a somewhat greater degree than those who do not, it does not follow that the one even contributes to the other. More probably both are the results of something else — the length of listening time. The longer a listener had listened to a given program the greater would be the probability that he would have learned the sponsor's name. By the same token, the greater would have been the program's opportunity to influence the listener's buying behavior. But the important point to be noted is that buying or other behavior may be influenced long before a "conscious impression" 1 is established. These findings also have bearing on another problem which radio has Sales Effectiveness in Relation to Conscious Impression Explained By D R MATTHEW N. CHAPPELL Consultant to C. E. Hooper Inc. NEWSPAPER space salesmen may be licking their chops over the New York dailies' survey purporting to show that newspaper advertising in the retail field outpulls radio 5-1. Before they bubble over, however, we commend attention to the new book Radio Audience Measurement by Matthew N. Chappell, Ph.D. and C. E. Hooper, M.B.A. [Stephen Daye, Inc., New York, #3.50]. One study, titled "Sales Effectiveness of Programs in Relation to 'Conscious Impression' " is particularly apropos. It was written long before the New York newspaper study, with its obvious fallacies, was plastered in the newspaper trade press. A direct response to the analysis, to be prepared by Dr. Chappell, former Columbia psychology professor, will appear in an early issue. inherited from the magazine field. It may be called the problem of the "Horse and Cart". The question asked concerning magazines is: Do people who read a magazine come to use a product because of the reading of a client's advertisement, or do they read the advertisement because they already use or are interested in the client's product? Which is the casual factor? Which is the Horse and which the Cart? In Magazine Field The answer to this problem has proved very difficult to obtain in the magazine field. It is not surprising that the same question should be raised concerning radio. Specifically the question for radio is: Do people who listen to a program buy the product advertised as a result of the listening or do they listen to the program because they already use the product or are otherwise pleasantly disposed toward the sponsor? If the program recruited listeners already favorably disposed to the sponsor, two conditions would follow as corollaries. First, all or most of the listeners should identify the sponsor. Secondly, those listeners who do not identify the sponsor should be no more favorably disposed toward the sponsor than are New Ttadio Research9 Volume Says Commercials Can Please Stanton and Lazarsfeld Find Hearers Gratified With Serials Which Provide Emotional Release 1 "Conscious Impression" as reflected an index to "Sponsor Identification" obtained only by the coincidental method. A SECOND Radio Research volume, a symposium of scientific investigation in the field, has made its appearance under the editing team of Paul F. Lazarsfeld, director of the Columbia U. Office of Radio Research, and Dr. Frank N. Stanton, CBS vice-president [Radio Research, 1942-1943, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, New York $5]. First survey results of the Program Analyzer are contained in the new volume, also an overall integrated picture of the daytime serial and a roundup of new techniques in listener research, all pointing, according to the editors, to the conclusion that far from arresting research, the war has "strengthened the demands for its continued development." Readers will find a goldmine of new and original data in such chapters as the one dealing with experiences with the LazarsfeldStanton program analyzer, by Tore Hollonquist, CBS study director, and Edward A. Suchman, of the research branch, Special Service Division, War Department. Applied to commercial announcement, for example, the analyzer chart has (Continued on page 52) DR. CHAPPELL the non-listeners. Both of these corollaries are proved to be false by the results presented in Table XIII. In the case of listeners who do not identify the sponsor, the possibility that the listener listens because he has an interest in the sponsor reduces to an absurdity. Sales Effectiveness The problem of "Horse and Cart" which has dogged the footsteps of measures in the magazine field, is solved in large part by the present method of studying program effectiveness. This method has a further advantage in that the use of "verified" groups reveals product effectiveness for new programs long before it can be discovered by most other methods of studying product use. The average sales effectiveness of the program is obtained by comparing the use of the product in the total listening group (verified listeners plus nonverified listeners) with the verified non-listeners group. In these overall comparisons the listening and non-listening groups are weighed according to their distribution in the population sampled. These studies of program effectiveness are based on a minimum sample of 1,000 previously recorded listening homes and 2,000 to 3,000 homes that have been recorded as non-listening. The size of the latter group depends upon the popularity of the program and is typically larger than the sample of listeners because of the excessive shrinkage in verification. TABLE XIII Sales Effectiveness of Programs in Relation to "Conscious Impression" (Percent of Sample Using Sponsor's Brand) PROGRAM A B C LISTENERS Identify Do Not Identify Sponsor Sponsor 8.3 4.3 22.0 19.4 62.4 57.6 NON-LISTENERS 2.9 12.2 47.7 BROADCASTING • Broadcast Advertising May 22, 1944 • Page 9