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Ameritest® Japan Frequently Asked Question
Research Procedure
01. Who is the sample being interviewed?
02. Where is the interview conducted?
03. How long is the interview?
04. How much of an incentive are respondents paid to participate?
05. What kinds of quality controls are provided for data collection?
06. In brief outline, what is the Ameritest® interview procedure?
07. What is the clutter reel (TV) and the clutter book (Print)?
08. What ads are in the clutter reel and clutter book?
09. How is the Attention Score measured?
10. How is Brand Linkage measured?
11. How is Communication measured?
12. How is Motivation measured?
13. What is the Ameritest Picture Sorts® ?
14. What do the respondents do in the Ameritest Picture Sorts® exercise?
15. How are the pictures chosen that are used in the Ameritest Picture Sorts® technique?
Q. 01 Who is the sample being interviewed?
A.01 For a typical research study, 100-150 target consumers are interviewed.
Q. 02 Where is the interview conducted?
A.02 The interviews are conducted in geographically dispersed markets and appropriate locations where there are suitable target consumers for each survey. For example, if the target consumer is female a shopping all intercept is selected. Also, if several locations are needed for survey, the usesof some locations are avoided. If a specialized target group provides difficult to use the street intercept method for the recruitment, then respondents are recruited by phone to a central research location for face-to-face interviews. Internationally, interviews may be conducted differently depending on the country and culture.
Q. 03 How long is the interview?
A.03 The typical interview with five to seven open-ended questions lasts approximately 35 minutes.
Q. 04 How much of an incentive are respondents paid to participate?
A.04 While incentives may vary depending on the survey length and the difficulty level, on average respondents for a central location test are paid 500 yen-1,000 yen by book coupon or gift card for their participation.
Q. 05 What kinds of quality controls are provided for data collection?
A.05 The identity of the company doing the research is kept confidential. Fieldwork is conducted by trained staff, recruiters and interviewers, and moreover, quality for recruitment and interviews is controlled by briefing session and close liaison. Additional
quality control checkpoints such as logic-check are included in the data processing procedure.
Q. 06 In brief outline, what is the Ameritest® interview procedure?
A.06 In the beginning of the interview, the respondent sees the test ad placed in a clutter reel of five ads. After exposure to the clutter reel, measures of Attention and Brand Linkage are collected.
Next the respondent is shown the test ad again by itself. (The respondent has had two chances to fully absorb the ad before diagnostics are collected.) Our measure of Motivation is collected first. The respondent is then asked a series of open-ended questions designed to assess Communication.
The respondent is then taken through a series of rating statements. Some ratings statements are about the execution (believability, uniqueness, likability, relevance, news, etc.). Other statements are about the brand (product ratings, company ratings, brand personality ratings?depending on the subject of the ad). Finally, the respondent is taken through the Ameritest Picture SortsR procedure to get at nonverbal assessments of cognitive processing and emotional response.
Q. 07 What is the clutter reel (TV) and the clutter book (Print)?
A.07 A clutter reel is a pool of five commercials that the respondent sees during the first part of the interview. It is designed to simulate an advertising break during television programming?the environment in which television commercials must compete for viewer attention. The clutter reel is composed of five commercials?the test ad and four other commercials. The test is placed in the middle position of the reel and in a series of three separate tapes the clutter ads are rotated around it.
The clutter book is very similar to the clutter reel in that it serves to simulate advertising consumers would typically encounter in a magazine. The clutter book is composed of ten ads?the test and nine other ads. The test ad is rotated through three different positions in the lineup of ads to void any position bias.
Q. 08 What ads are in the clutter reel and clutter books?
A.08 The standard ads used in the clutter reel/books vary. Some advertisers use commercials that are advertising different products from the test ad. To gain competitive learnings, some advertisers choose to use competitive commercials for the clutter. A new clutter ad is typically introduced quarterly.
We have different clutters for rough or finished film so the test ad will be seen with ads having similar production quality.
Q. 09 How is the Attention Score measured?
A.09 The attention-generating power of a television commercial is measured by its ability to attract the interest of a viewer within a clutter environment with different commercials competing for attention. After seeing the clutter reel, respondents are asked a couple of blind questions to purge short-term memory, for example, “What's your favorite television program?”Then respondents are asked: “Now I'd like you to think back to the commercials I showed you earlier. What commercials, if any, did you find interesting?”
The percentage of respondents reporting the test ad as one of the ads they found interesting is the Attention Score for the ad.
Q.10 How is Brand Linkage measured?
A.10 Brand Linkage is a derived measure taken from the Attention Score question. The answers which respondents give to the “Which of the commercials did you find interesting”question are coded to see whether or not the respondent used the brand name in describing the ad. The percentage of those respondents who find the ad interesting and use the brand name to talk about the ad gives us the Brand Linkage measure.
Q.11 How is Communication measured?
A.11 Communication is measured after the second exposure of the test ad by itself. Respondents are asked four non-leading, open-ended questions to get them to talk about the advertising:
- As you watched this commercial, what thoughts and feelings went through your mind?
- Please describe what happened in this commercial. Tell me what was said and shown.
- What do you think is the main message in this commercial?
The responses to these four questions are treated as one and are coded for the different messages that respondents play back. This playback can be evaluated against an intended or strategic message criteria established by the client.
Q.12 How is Motivation measured?
A.12 Motivation deals with the potential short-term, sales-related effects of the advertising. The respondents are asked:
"How likely would you be to buy the brand advertised in the commercial you just saw?"
- Definitely would buy
- Probably would buy
- May or may not buy
- Probably would not buy
- Definitely would not buy
The wording of this question may be modified to take into account longer purchase cycles or indirect selling messages.
Q.13 What is the Ameritest Picture SortsR?
A.13 The Ameritest Picture SortsR is our most powerful diagnostic tool. It is a proprietary method that sets Ameritest® apart from other pretesting systems. This diagnostic tool is designed to deal with television as primarily a visual medium, overcoming the verbal bias inherent in most copytesting systems.
Q.14 What do the respondents do in the Ameritest Picture SortsR exercise?
A.14 This part of the interview is one of the last things respondents do and is actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the interview. In this diagnostic part of the interview, respondents are shown individual frames (typically from ten to 30) that were taken from the commercial itself. The number of pictures is determined by the visual complexity of the ad and is not determined by a mechanical rule?our procedure is to take as many pictures as we can tell apart. These photographs represent a sampling of the visual information contained in the commercial.
The frames provide us with a vocabulary for interrogating the respondent about the visual experience they had of the advertising, without asking them to say anything in words. As a result, this non-verbal diagnostic technique allows us to reach across language barriers to try to get a better window on respondent's television experience. This becomes a particularly effective tool when facing foreign language issues or testing with children.
The task respondents are asked to perform is actually quite simple and intuitive. They sort the frames according to different rules for the particular measure in question. For the Flow Attention®, they simply sort by the images they remember seeing and the ones they do not.
For the Flow of EmotionR, they sort pictures into six categories, from very strong positive to very strong negative emotional reactions to the sampled images. For different customized questions, other sorting criteria might be used from time to time.
Q.15 How are the pictures chosen that are used in the Picture SortsR technique?
A.15 The pictures represent a sample of the visual information present in the commercial. In a sense, the total number of pictures we need to take in order to describe the ad is an objective measure of the visual complexity of the commercial. For that reason, we do not use a mechanical rule for taking the pictures (e.g. every two seconds) but rather use judgement to take the pictures. Basically, the rule of thumb for taking pictures is that if we can see a meaningful difference between two frames that are close together in the ad we include both pictures in the deck.
Q.16 What about the copy?
A.16 For many commercials (depending on the amount of copy in the ad) an exercise similar to the Ameritest Picture SortsR is conducted. The copy is deconstructed into phrases which the respondent is asked to sort through. The sorts typically conducted on the copy are memorability and relevance.
