Research Analyses: Benchmarks of Comparisons

08Jun08

“The ad achieved a 70% level of awareness in Asia.”

How can this statement be meaningful or helpful in evaluating the success of your campaign? I started thinking about research benchmarks this week. I’m not too sure if there’s a term that refers to that, but oh well.

Research benchmarks would refer to statistics/numbers that reflect the industry standards or the current situation of the marketplace. These benchmarks will help in the analysis of survey results in determining if, in this case, the 70% level of awareness is high enough.

With “level of awareness” as an example, such benchmarks could be in the form of:
1) Expected level of awareness set by the marketing team
2) Level of awareness achieved by previous campaign
3) Level of awareness achieved by direct competitor in the category
4) Average level of awareness achieved by competing ads in the region

Many concerns came flooding in my mind as to the accuracy of the benchmarks as well as the difficulties and costs involved in trying to estimate the industry averages. Firstly, how would you decide on which average to use as a benchmark? Should industry averages be time-specific? Region-specific? Target market-specific? Or product-specific? Secondly, how do you go about creating an industry estimate? For example, to determine the level of media awareness of a certain TVC, do you look at gross rating points or the survey results for “Have you ever seen this TV ad?”?

In this case, if conclusions drawn upon market research have to be substantiated with comparisons against industry standards to be meaningful, the market researcher in me feel jittery about realising how difficult it is to estimate the industry standard. In what other ways can market research be useful then?

Update: Had most of the questions answered.. thanks to all =)

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