Point of View: Does Advertising Cause a 'Hierarchy of effects'?

This paper addresses three general questions about hierarchy models of advertising effects: (1) Why hierarchy-of-advertising-effects models do not provide an accurate description of the effects of advertising, and (2) Why these hierarchy-of-advertising-effects models are not an accurate conceptualization of how advertising works as a marketing force in the real world, and, (3) Why, as long as our thinking about advertising and its effects is dominated by the hierarchy-of-advertising-effects frame of mind, it is unlikely that we will ever measure the true effects of advertising.

Point of View: Does Advertising Cause a ‘Hierarchy of Effects’?

William M. Weilbacher, Bismark Corporation

Advertising is generally seen as a means of communicating persuasively with consumers. This communication process – if it is successful – ultimately results in the sale of the product or service advertised to at least some of the consumers that have been exposed to the advertising. If such sales do not happen, the advertising is judged not to have been effective.

As Russell Colley (1961) put it:

Advertising’s job purely and simply is to communicate,...

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