The survey included the following sections: Introduction, Pre-Ad Exposure, Advertisement Exposure, Post-Ad Exposure, Brand Attitudes, Advertisement Attitudes, and Demographics. A description of each of these sections follows.
Title Page
The questionnaire opens with a brief message requesting the participation of email recipients. It assures the educational nature of the survey and the strict confidentiality of all responses.
Pre-ad Exposure (Sections 1 and 2)
Respondents were asked to report their most recent purchase of a soft drink, a sports drink, and bottled water. Following that, the likelihood of purchasing each of three named brands of soft drinks, sports drinks and bottled water was reported. These constant sum values were reported by respondents using a 10 point total allocation among the three choices within each category. Only the bottled water scores were used for analysis and were collected immediately prior to and after viewing the ads. The difference between the initial score and the post-ad exposure score is referred to throughout as the Change Score.
Advertisement Exposure (Section 3)
This section contains full-color, single page magazine advertisements for each brand of bottled water. Respondents were asked to read the ads and then to complete the remainder of the survey without looking back at the ads.
Three print ads were selected from a fashion magazine, InStyle (Evian, Fiji: September, 2006, Aquafina: January, 2006). All three ads are in the same layout and in color. Below are the ads appeared to respondents:
 |
 |
 |
Post-ad Exposure (Sections 4 and 5)
The same constant sum scale used to measure likelihood of purchase before the advertising exposure was repeated immediately after respondents viewed the advertisements. Respondents were also asked several “yes” or “no” questions about their attitudes towards the brands after seeing the advertisements.
Brand Attitudes (Section 6)
This section included ten Likert items containing statements about each brand, allowing respondents to indicate whether they “strongly agree,” “agree,” “neither agree nor disagree,” “disagree,” or “strongly disagree” with the statement. These questions measured respondent attitudes by linking either a positive (“Aquafina is a good brand of water”) or negative (I would not drink Aquafina) statement with the 1-5 Likert scale. Agreement with the statement is indicated by a higher score than disagreement.
Advertisement Attitudes (Sections 7 and 8)
The next series of questions measured response to the advertisements in two formats. Section 7 allowed respondents to “check” a box that indicated agreement with a single word descriptor identified as “describing” the advertisement (i.e “boring”). Section 8 was a series of 10 statements to mark “yes” or “no” signifying either agreement or disagreement with the statement (i.e. “This ad was annoying”). The Ad Index Score was created from the summation of the positively worded phrases or descriptors that were identified by respondents as applying to the advertisement.
Demographics (Section 9)
The final section of the survey asked respondents a variety of demographic questions including gender, age, education, household income, and bottled water consumption.
NEXT