Measuring the effectiveness of generic advertising- an analysis of the sugar generic marketing campaign

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine if consumer attitude towards sugar is an indicator of sugar consumption behaviour. Attitudinal statements were developed using the results of a segmentation study, which classified sugar consumers into six segments. These statements, which were characteristic of consumer attitudes towards sugar, were included in a national survey of 2 516 respondents to test sugar consumption behaviour relative to consumer attitudes. Conventional statistical methods were applied to analyse the sugar consumption behaviour of respondents within the six attitudinal segments. It was found that there is a direct relationship between consumer attitudes towards sugar and sugar consumption behaviour. Consumers with a positive predisposition towards sugar were found to consume significantly more sugar than those in negatively predisposed segments. According to attitude theory, which suggests that attitude can be influenced and changed, the study concludes that generic advertising is an appropriate communication tool to influence and change the attitudes of negatively predisposed sugar users in order to improve sugar consumption. Furthermore the segmentation based on attitudes provides a method for measuring the success of advertising initiatives by monitoring the movement of consumers between positive and negative segments.