Doug, a marketing director for a movie production company, is planning to study the effectiveness of some recently released television commercials for one of its upcoming films. What are some potential measurement problems he should be aware of?

If Doug wished to ask consumers to recall their reactions to the commercials there several issues he should be aware of.
Response Biases-Results obtained from a measuring instrument are not necessarily caused by what is being measured, but rather to something else about the instrument or the respondent. This form of contamination is called a response bias. For example, people tend to give "yes" responses to questions, regardless of what is asked. In addition, consumers are often eager to be "good subjects" by pleasing the experimenter. They will try to give the responses they think the experimenter is looking for. In some studies, the claimed recognition of bogus ads (ads that have not been seen before) is almost as high as the recognition rate of real ads.
Memory Lapses-People are also prone to unintentionally forgetting information. Typical problems include omitting (the leaving out of facts), averaging (the tendency to "normalize" things and not report extreme cases), and telescoping (the inaccurate recall of time). These distortions call into question the accuracy of various product usage databases that rely on consumers to recall their purchases and consumption of food and household items. In one study, for example, people were asked to describe what portion of various foods-small, medium, or large-they ate in a normal meal. However, different definitions of medium were used (e.g., 3/4 cup versus 1-1/2 cups). Regardless of the measurement specified, about the same number of people claimed they normally ate medium portions.
Memory for Facts versus Feelings-Although techniques are being developed to increase the accuracy of memory scores, these improvements do not address the more fundamental issue of whether recall is necessary for advertising to have an effect. In particular, some critics argue that these measures do not adequately tap the impact of "feeling" ads, where the objective is to arouse strong emotions rather than to convey concrete product benefits. Many ad campaigns, including those for Hallmark, Tim Hortons, and Bell, use this approach. An effective strategy relies on a long-term buildup of feeling rather than on a one-shot attempt to convince consumers to buy the product.