Financial services ads and viewer response profiles: Psychometric properties of a shortened scale

Schlinger's Viewer Response Profile is a widely used tool in advertising research, in both commercial and academic environments. It is used in ad testing to gauge viewer reactions to television commercials. Initial research on its psychometric properties was critical of the scale; however, more recent work using more sophisticated statistical techniques and larger, more realistic, samples has been much more complimentary. This article reports on the use of a shorter version of the Schlinger scale to test financial services advertisements. The findings generally indicate that the scale can be used with confidence in that environment, and that the shorter scale generally performed well. The limitations of the study are acknowledged, managerial implications are discussed, and avenues for future research are identified