A new method for testing advertising and a psychological sales barometer

Abstract

A description is given of methods and results through experiments and questionnaire investigations among 14,000 consumers by 60 psychologists, representatives of the Psychological Corporation, throughout the United States. The significance of a new method of triple associates in testing the memory for advertisements is illustrated with results obtained on various products such as coffee, gasoline, building material, soap, etc. Statistical techniques are shown for testing the reliability and consistency of different samples of data at the same time, at different times, and in different localities. The results of these investigations seem to indicate "that all the many factors in advertising, hitherto considered important, such as size, repetition, frequency, position, use of color or black and white, etc., were relatively unimportant." The one most important factor in successful advertising is the character of the central idea or theme. Consistent results over a period of two years on the actual purchasing behavior of consumers and the association of advertising themes with products has led to the development of the sales barometer. This method shows sales trends for products over varying periods of time and throughout various localities in the country. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)