The Marketing Book 5th Edition

450 The Marketing Book

introduces a completely new criterion, pre-
sumably relating to competitive comparisons.
In short, surrogatetests are being substi-
tuted in practice. Investigation of further case
histories would soon lead to the conclusion that
they are typically based on a common explana-
tion of how advertising is thought to work,
which could equally easily be applied to any
other ingredient of the promotional mix. It is
unlikely that practitioners themselves are con-
sciously aware that this is happening. As a guide
to best practice from the Institute of Practitioners
in Advertising puts it, they ‘may follow very
varied mental models but they too seldom
articulate them’ (Broadbent, 1995, p. 17).
This particular model is the ‘hierarchy of
effects’, which first appeared in the literature
more than 70 years ago. A textbook by a famous
American market researcher of the day
included a conceptual framework for testing
the effectiveness of advertisements, which
argued that ‘to be effective, an advertisement
must be... seen, read, believed, remembered,
and acted upon’ (Starch, 1923). That initiative
was closely followed by another for the effect-
ive delivery of a sales pitch, which should gain
attention, generate interest, create desire and
precipitate action (Strong, 1925). Under an
acronym derived from the initials of those four
required responses, AIDA, it was soon trans-
ferred to the formulation of advertising strat-
egy, and has remained popular ever since.
After a considerable interval, the generic
description ‘hierarchy of effects’ was coined by
Lavidge and Steiner (1961) to describe a six-step
‘model for predictive measurement of advertis-
ing effectiveness’. In the same year, a five-step
framework for ‘defining advertising goals for
measured advertising results’ was proposed by
the Association of National Advertisers in New
York (Colley, 1962). It too became known by an
acronym, this time derived from the description
rather than the steps: ‘Dagmar’. The only further
progress in the subsequent four decades has
been a relatively little noticed article with the
telling subtitle ‘keeping the hierarchy concept
alive’ (Preston and Thorson, 1984).

Table 17.5 proposes a consolidation of

these five paradigms, and could accommodate

other family members not reported here. The

left-hand column uses terms from the origi-

nals to define the response required from the

audience for the initiative to be effective. The

right-hand column relates each response to the

generic cognitive–affective–conative (C-A-C)

pattern of response to stimuli other than

advertisements. Since cognitive responses are

the outcome of thinking about what is hap-

pening, affective responses result from an

emotional reaction to the stimulus, and con-

ative responses involve consequent actions,

this model is popularly summed up as think–

feel–do.

The hierarchy-of-effects hypothesis pro-

vides an intuitively reasonable description of

what is happening, but offers no explanationof

how or why. It has furthermore been subjected

to continuous theoretical criticism over the past

30 years, beginning with a widely reported

evaluation of Lavidge and Steiner’s model by

Palda (1966), who doubted that the accomplish-

ment of one step necessarily increased the

probability of the next and called into question

their very sequence. Others subsequently dem-

onstrated the existence of do–feel–think,

think–do–feel and do–think–feel variations.

For each of these, the role of promotion would

Table 17.5 The

hierarchy-of-effects model of

promotion

Effectiveness criterion: C-A-C equivalent

Action Do

Conviction Feel

Sympathy Feel

Comprehension Think

Interest Think

Attention Think