Methodology

 

THE QUESTIONNAIRE:

The first page of the questionnaire is an introduction. This page provides respondents a brief information about who created the survey, why it was put together, and assures the participant that all of their responses are strictly confidential and for educational purposes only. The questionnaire consists of three main sections.  The first section is made up of questions that determine the pre to post exposure change score by measuring the respondents brand preference.  The respondents were first asked to divide 10 points between each cereal bar brand according to how likely they were to perceive each brand.  After their initial brand preference had been determined the respondents were asked to view an advertisement for each of the three cereal bar brands.  After their brief exposure to each of the print ads, the respondents were asked to indicate their preference for each brand by again dividing 10 points between the brands.

In the second section of the questionnaire, the respondents were asked to indicate how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each of the 10 statements by answering ten Likert items related to brand attributes.  The answers to each Likert item was used to determine respondents’ attitude towards each brand of cereal bar. An example of a Likert item is “Nature Valley is a good brand.”.  The respondent was then asked to choose between 5 point scales: strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree. 

The third main section was divided into two parts.  The first part of questions gives 10 descriptive words, such as "attractive", "boring", and "informative", which were used to describe the advertisements.  The respondent was asked to check the box if they felt the word described the advertisement shown for each brand.  The second group of questions consisted of 10 questions used to describe the ad itself, such as, “This ad was believable.”  Respondents were asked to check “yes” or “no” for each of the 10 statements for each cereal bar brand. 

The final section asked respondents basic demographic information such as gender, age, exercise habits, and cereal bar consumption.. 

 

DESIGN:

This survey was designed to determine the differences between the respondents' original brand preference and the post-ad exposure brand preference. There was no control group used in this survey; instead the findings are based upon the change in brand preference scores. The respondents whose scores did not changed after viewing the print ads were labled "non-movers." Those respondents whose scores increased were called "up-movers," and those whose scores decreased were called "down-movers."

SAMPLING:

Non random sampling was conducted for educational purposes.  An email was sent out to friends and relatives. The email contained the link to the survey asking individuals to complete the survey and to forward  to any people. A total of 72 respondents attempted to complete the survey. Of those, 63 surveys were correctly completed. Thus, the sample size for this study is 63. 

 

DATA COLLECTION:

The data in this study was collected electronically during a week period. Respondents participated this survey by clicking a link contained in the email they received.  When the respondents clicked submit the information was connected and stored in a Microsoft Access Database file.  The questionnaire was connected to the database file through a Cold Fusion File.  The data was then transferred from the database file into a statistical analysis program called SPSS.  63 participates completed the survey correctly.