Marketing Models

How does advertising work?

Why does advertising result in increased sales? This is a question about the
psychology of people who are on the receiving end of an advertising campaign.
Various explanations of the effect of a media message have been explained.
The AIDA model
In Strong's AIDA model the stages of selling are Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Other models all follow the same pattern. Strong claims that advertising can move a
product one step along the chain; e.g. a single campaign can either grasp attention for
a new product; raise interest for an existing product; promote desire for a product; or
motivate immediate action to purchase the product. However, a single campaign
cannot move a product through all four stages at a single time. If this is correct then
an advertising campaign requires time and careful planning. The advertiser must be
aware of the stage that his product has generally reached.
The moral is that you cannot with a single advertising campaign cause consumers to
purchase an otherwise wholly unknown product. You need four advertising
campaigns to achieve this, and these need to be spread out over time.
The Dagmar Communication Spectrum
DAGMAR is an acronym for Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising
Results. This model is an attempt to explain the effect of advertising on the public.
Starting with a promotion mix the campaign successively moves the product through
the stages
1. Unawareness
2. Awareness
3. Comprehension
4. Conviction
5. Action
Even when the end stage of action (purchase) has been reached, the product will face
competition from other products, the consumers will suffer from memory lapses and
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forget about it, there will be resistance to purchasing and other market forces will
affect sales. However, that is at least a better situation than unawareness!
This system recognises that consumers move through a number of phases from
unawareness to awareness, comprehension, preference and conviction to action. In
the case of impulse purchases, these stages might be compressed into a few minutes,
whereas with other products the process may be spaced out over weeks or even
months. Promotional activities are designed to move the consumer through the
various stages of the spectrum.
It will, however, be noted that both models are very similar. Both state that
advertising takes time to move the recipients through a succession of stages; that the
attention of the audience must be grasped first and that actual sales only result at the
end of a series of campaigns.