Abstract

Methodological and Theoretical Foundations of Advertising Copytesting: A Review David W. Stewart, Connie Pechrnann, Srinivasan Ratneshwar, Jon Stroud, and Beverly Bryant Examination of various measures of response to advertising and communica- tion effectiveness has been among the most frequent activities of researchers in industry and the academic community. Empirical studies abound and review papers are numerous. Ostlund [1978] and Leckenby and Plummer [1983] have provided recent general review papers. The Advertising Research Foundation issues periodic bibliographies on copytesting [1939,1960, 19721 and Stout and Leckenby [1984] and Lipstein and McGuire [1978] provide an update of these. Lipstein and Neelankavi [1982], Clancy and Ostlund [1976] and Stewart, Furse, and Kozak [1983] provide descriptions of current industry practices and commercial copytesting services. Arnold and Bird [1982] and Gibson [1983] review recall measures. Stewart and Furse [1982a] review the use of psychophysiological measures. In response to the growing numbers and diversity of copytesting methods and measures, a coalition of advertising agencies has suggested guidelines for developing and evaluating the results of copytesting procedures [PACT 19821. Stewart and Furse [1982b] have offered an extension of these guidelines and have articulated specific operationalizations of these principals. There have been numerous conferences on advertising copytesting in