Point of View: Does Advertising Cause a ‘Hierarchy of Effects’?

ABSTRACT This paper addresses three general questions about hierarchy models of advertising effects: (1) Why hierarchy-of-advertising-effects models do not provide an accurate description of the effects of advertising, and (2) Why these hierarchy-of-advertising-effects models are not an accurate conceptualization of how advertising works as a marketing force in the real world, and, (3) Why, as long as our thinking about advertising and its effects is dominated by the hierarchy-of-advertising-effects frame of mind, it is unlikely that we will ever measure the true effects of advertising. In addition, the implications of these shortcomings of hierarchy models of advertising effects for the concept of integrated marketing communications are discussed.