Assessing Progress In Advertising-Related Scale Development & Usage

Abstract

An awareness in the advertising industry of the inadequacy of current practices in copy testing led to the development of PACT (Positioning Advertising Copy Testing), a statement of fundamental copy testing principles developed by twenty-one of the world's leading advertising agencies. A primary concern of this coalition was that too much reliance had been placed on single-item measures to assess the performance of ads, with a concurrent lack of validation of the measures being used. Subsequently, few studies have followed up on the PACT recommendations, resulting in little in the way of objective data to assess the progress made in the development and use of multi-item scales. This study offers an initial examination of the progress made in response to the PACT recommendations by developing an inventory and evaluation of advertising-related scales. Insights from this analysis lead to specific observations regarding the state of the art in advertising research as well as recommendations for future scale research.