Consumer Groups Worried by Trend to Use Surveys in Ads
First Interstate Bank’s customer service is tops. You can count on USAir to be on time. Arm & Hammer’s toothpaste is good for your teeth.
That, at least, is what the companies maintain, based on a variety of surveys.
People who follow advertising trends say the recession has led to a proliferation of surveys that gauge a product’s popularity or performance. With money tight, consumers need a good reason to buy--and surveys seem to provide that.
“Consumers look for something to hang their hat on,” said William Young, president of Market Trends, a Bellevue, Wash., market research firm. “If a company has something that says it is best, it makes sense to let people know.”
But critics say surveys rarely tell consumers anything useful and often appear slanted to favor a product. In a few recent cases, government officials have told advertisers to stop using certain unscientific surveys.
In California, the Department of Consumer Affairs forced a Bay Area thrift, California Savings & Loan, to drop radio ads that boasted “superior . . . helpfulness and customer service.” A state investigation revealed that the claim was based on a survey of just 16 of the S&L;’s customers.
“Deceptive advertising is rampant,” said Jim Conran, director of the Consumer Affairs Department. He is setting up volunteer “truth squads” of retired people to investigate product claims and do comparison shopping.
Some surveys appear valid. For example, First Interstate hired an outside firm, Market Trends, to send a “mystery shopper” to every branch and to most branches of 18 competitors. Its ads are careful to point out that the confidential survey did not rate products, such as checking accounts, a bank spokeswoman said. First Interstate said it took pains to make certain it was statistically accurate, and no one has challenged it.
Young said about 10% of his customers use surveys to make superiority claims. While the claims might initially attract consumers, corporate boasting can backfire, he said. “If First Interstate promises the best service and doesn’t deliver, the consumer is going to walk across the street to a competitor,” he said.
Other claims are harder for consumers to assess. In an ad for Arm & Hammer’s Dental Care, a toothpaste that contains baking soda, the company states that “two out of three dentists recommend baking soda for healthier teeth and gums.”
What the ads don’t say is that many of the dentists surveyed also endorsed fluoride toothpaste, dental floss and mouthwashes. What’s more, Arm & Hammer talked to 300 dentists--a group that UC Riverside statistics professor James Press says is “too small to tell you anything reliable.”
Arm & Hammer defended its survey, but refused to answer questions about it, saying it was confidential.
As a marketing device, surveys aren’t new. Car makers have long touted good grades on surveys conducted by automotive consultants and industry publications. Supermarket chains regularly churn out “low price” surveys.
The survey is undergoing something of a renaissance lately as companies try to persuade recession-weary consumers to buy. “It is no longer enough to be useful,” said Ronald H. Smithies, vice president of the Washington-based Better Business Bureau. “Companies feel they’ve got to claim their product is better. It is part of the urgency of today.”
Smithies heads a bureau division that investigates advertising claims. With Harvard Business School marketing professor Bruce Buchanan, Smithies analyzed 119 taste claims made by manufacturers since 1974. The analysis, published in the Journal of Advertising Research in June, found that only 43% of taste claims were substantiated. Among the brands whose claims were based on faulty research, according to Smithies and Buchanan, were Comet Rice, Tropicana, Crisco and Bumble Bee.
Smithies said the industry recognizes that there is a problem. Several months ago, his division brought together advertising executives, brand managers, statisticians and lawyers to discuss survey methodology and explore such topics as “the definition of deception.” Though the debate wasn’t resolved, advertisers “understand they play a major role in educating or miseducating the public,” Smithies said.
Statisticians say it is easy to slant a survey by asking leading questions and leaving out certain demographic groups. “I could do it--no problem,” said Frederick Wiseman, a marketing professor at Northeastern University in Boston.
Wiseman helped take the fizz out of diet cola claims in Massachusetts two years ago. Reviewing survey data for the Massachusetts Department of Consumer Affairs, Wiseman found that neither Diet Coke nor Diet Pepsi was “preferred by consumers,” as claimed.
The cola companies withdrew their boasts after Wiseman found that Diet Coke had ignored the western half of the country, and that Diet Pepsi had only questioned people who lived within 100 miles of four bottling plants.
“The quality of the research was not very good,” Wiseman said.
Several statisticians interviewed said they generally don’t believe marketing claims. Unless an ad explains its methodology, “I ignore it,” UC Riverside’s Press said.
Increasingly, companies are borrowing the research of others--consumer groups, government agencies and market research companies. Tylenol Gelcaps relied on confidential A. C. Nielsen survey data to buttress its claim that “more people switched” to it last year “than any other pain reliever.” A spokesman for Tylenol maker Johnson & Johnson said the Nielsen survey showed that Gelcaps had the highest sales growth of all pain relievers--results that no one in the industry disputes.
What brands did the new Gelcaps users switch from? Johnson & Johnson isn’t exactly sure. The spokesman said it looks as if some competitors lost out--and, possibly, Tylenol tablets and caplets.
Even when outside research is used, an advertiser’s claim isn’t necessarily reliable.
The survey that got California Savings into trouble was done by Consumer Checkbook, a Bay Area consumer organization. Consumer Checkbook President Robert M. Krughoff said the survey wasn’t scientific. “It was intended as a guide for consumers,” he said. “Not proof.”
And Consumer Action of San Francisco got into a dispute last spring with a firm that used the consumer group’s survey to tout its long-distance service as a “best buy.”
“It was a complete distortion,” said Ken McEldowney, president of Consumer Action. “We never called anything a best buy.” He declined to identify the company, which withdrew the ad. Burned by the experience, Consumer Action no longer lets companies use its surveys in advertisements.
Then there is the case of USAir. Citing a government survey, USAir claimed in splashy ads last month that it had the best on-time record of “any of the seven largest airlines.”
It didn’t appear in the fine print, but there was a good reason why USAir compared itself to the industry’s top seven. Government statistics showed that the eighth-largest airline, Pan Am, had the best on-time record. USAir was really No. 2.
USAir defended its decision to omit Pan Am. “It’s too small to consider a competitor,” spokeswoman Agnes Huff said. The Department of Transportation had no comment on how its statistics were used.
Executives at Pan Am “had a good chuckle over that ad,” spokesman Alan Loflin said. “It shows how you can use surveys to say anything.”
When Surveys Can Be Misleading When USAir says in its advertisements that it’s No. 1 in on-time performance of “any of the seven largest airlines,” it’s committing a bit of survey sleight of hand. A government survey shows that the eighth-largest airline, Pan Am, actually has the No. 1 on-time performance record. When smaller airlines are taken into consideration, here’s what the top 10 really look like:
Rank Company 1 Pan Am 2 USAir 3 Northwest 4 Eastern 5 America West 6 American 7 Alaska 8 Continental 9 Southwest 10 Delta
Source: Transportation Department
