Single-Source Research Begins to Fulfill Its Promise

The 'failure' of previous attempts to demonstrate short-term effects of advertising was actually a result of the limited measurement methods available to researchers.

Single-Source Research Begins to Fulfill Its Promise

John Philip Jones

For 29 years, single-source research - the technique that brings together a household's exposure to marketing stimuli, eg, a brand's advertising, and purchases of that same brand within the same household - has offered the most alluring promise of solving the mystery of how advertising works. Yet the aggravating fact is that, until now, we have not been able to replicate McDonald's original British experiment carried out in 1966 (McDonald, 1979). Attempts to do so have always been defeated by the practical problem of identifying all the commercials that appear...

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