Two studies conducted by Family Circle magazine, Citicorp POS and Simmons Market Research Bureau have come up with some pretty convincing evidence of the effects of magazine advertising. The first, the Family Circle Advertising Impact Study, followed the buying habits of nearly 400,000 households in four metro areas during a 28-week period.

The advertising impact study measured the purchasing habits of two groups, one group was exposed to the advertising in an issue of Family Circle, the other was not. (Family Circle has a circulation of 5 million copies, including single copy and subscriptions.) The purchases of both groups were monitored over a 28-week period beginning on December 30,1991. The period was broken down into three segments, a 12-week pre-period; a 4-week observation period; and a 12-week post-period.

"The most significant finding is that magazine advertising had profound, significant, and immediate effects on sales of the advertised brand. In the past, we weren't credited with that," says Rebecca McPheters, vice president of Information Services at The New York Times Company Women's Magazines, the company that publishes Family Circle.

"In the late 80s and early 90s there has been a lot of talk about advertising accountability and so it seemed that given that the tools were available this was kind of the time to move the ball forward. The other thing that we were able to prove is that magazine advertising does reach people who are disproportionate purchasers of multiple product categories, which is consistent with what we had been hearing from syndicated research for a long time but it was nice to be able to validate that. So you have two effects: the audience effect that accrues from reaching people who are already predisposed toward a particular category and the ad effect which synergistically impacts on that."

Study is unique

According to the study reports, the study is unique in five respects because it:

  1. Focused solely on the effectiveness of magazine advertising. It did not involve intermedia comparisons.
  2. Measured actual behavior - rather than intent - at the household level.
  3. Isolated volume effects among households with known exposure to advertising.
  4. Did not measure the effects of advertising on either attitude or recall.
  5. Did not rely on consumer perceptions of either advertising exposure or of product purchase.

"Most other studies have dealt with changes in awareness, recall, intent to purchase, or perceived purchase and this study clearly wasn't about awareness or intent, it was about actual purchase," McPheters says. "One of the things that we learned was that people' s perceptions, for example, of frequency of purchase, are different from actual purchase behavior. When you're asking people what they have purchased within a one month or six week time frame, as many of the syndicated services do, it's difficult for people to remember...did they purchase it seven weeks ago or six weeks ago? There's a lot of room for errors in perception."

Four metro areas

The study was conducted with consumers in four metro areas: Richmond, Virginia; Denver; Chicago; and Southern California (Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego). Participants were chosen from shopper's clubs of the Von's Pavilion, Ukrop's, Safeway and Jewel supermarket chains.

The sample was generated using data from the Citicorp POS scanner database, which contains information on purchasing habits collected from participating households, who receive program benefits from supermarket retailers in exchange for allowing their purchases to be tracked.

The scanner information identified households that had purchased a single copy of the April 21, 1992 issue of Family Circle. That list was checked against a list of subscribing households to identify subscribers. Of the households exposed to the advertising, 52% had purchased the single issue; 48% received their copy by subscription.

The non-exposed group was weighted to make it similar to the exposed group in terms of market, household size and income, age of the head of the household, and average number of weekly shopping trips. (While the study controlled for demography, it did not control directly for exposure to other media. However, use of Simmons information on the media consumption habits of Family Circle readers allowed the researchers to make some inferences.)

Increased sales

Nine brands that ran one or more paid four-color ads in the April 21 issue participated in the study. Overall, the study found that magazine advertising increased sales for eight of the nine brands. This was demonstrated by:

  • Absolute sales 22.5% higher among exposed households during the period of advertising.
  • A rate of increase over base period sales 10% higher among exposed households.

One of the nine brands, Endust Dusting and Cleaning Spray, experienced a high increase in sales during the test period. In the first half of 1992, Endust advertised only in magazines. In addition to the ad in Family Circle, Endust also ran ads in April in Good Housekeeping and Parade. Two additional Endust ads ran in the January 1992 Family Circle and March 1992 issue of USA Weekend.

During the 12 weeks before the Endust ad ran in Family Circle, the control and exposed groups bought Endust at the same rate. After the ad ran in Family Circle, the exposed group bought 25% more. During the post period, those who bought Family Circle continued to buy Endust at a 10% higher rate than those in the control group. According to the study report, "There was virtually no change in the Endust purchasing of the control group throughout the 28 week measurement period."

Effect of coupons

The Endust ad featured a coupon, which may account for its effectiveness. McPheters says she suspects that coupons have an impact, but the study didn't measure coupon impact directly. A subsequent study may investigate that.

"I have the strong point of view that coupons make ads more effective. But in fact across the studies we've done we have only measured four ads with coupons. The Endust ad had a 75 cent coupon, which certainly would seem to have generated a high degree of consumer interest but with only four couponed ads measured we can't generalize. Over time as we develop a larger database including more coupon ads we'll be able to address that more directly."

The study also tracked the impact of an ad for Nabisco Teddy Grahams. In the first half of 1992, approximately 65% of the advertising budget for Teddy Grahams was spent on television. The remainder of the budget went for purchasing space in six Family Circle and five other magazines, such as Parents and Better Homes & Gardens. During the pre-test period, households that were exposed to the ad in Family Circle purchased 10.6% more Teddy Grahams than the households who weren't known to have purchased Family Circle. In the observation period, the control households were outpurchased by exposed households by 21%. In the 12 weeks after the ad ran in Family Circle, exposed households bought 20% more than the control households.

Both the Teddy Graham and Endust examples also show that advertising had an impact on sales in the products' respective categories. In the ready-to-eat cookie category, the study found a 16.7% sales differential between the exposed and control groups during the four-week observation period. Weekly volume per 100 households in the furniture care category was higher for the exposed group than for the control group through all three periods of the study.

Awareness of advertising

The magazine study was followed up with 500 phone interviews with a nationally projectable sample of women find out if women were aware that magazine advertising affected their purchase habits.

  • 58% of the women surveyed said that magazine advertising affects their purchase decision.
  • Almost two-thirds (64%) said that magazine advertising affects their purchase decision even more than TV advertising.
  • The respondents said an ad's cou-pons (86%) are most useful, followed by its recipes (81%), product information (77%), "how-to" tips (73%) and "education" (61%).

"We had the proof of magazine advertising effectiveness but we wondered if people were aware of it," McPheters says. "It was interesting that in fact they knew that it worked. They were asked about whether they responded to advertising in different media, they said they responded particularly well to magazine advertising."

Schedule impact study

Using a methodology similar to the Advertising Impact study, the second study, the Family Circle Study of Schedule Impact, tracked sales to 80,000 households over 68 weeks. It found that high frequency advertisers achieved significant sales gains that were maintained for the duration of the advertising schedule.

Other findings:

  • Advertising schedules generated sustained sales increases for six of the seven brands measured.
  • For the six brands, increases in sales attributable to advertising averaged 13 percent.
  • The advertising schedules increased sales of the advertised product categories by five percent.

Of the seven brands tracked in the Schedule Impact Study, Spray 'N Wash Stain Stick was a top performer. The brand, which advertised three times in the magazine over a four-month period, saw its sales increase at a rate 37 percent higher among households exposed to its advertising in one or more issues than among the others. For its product category, the rate of increase was 15 percent higher.