Holiday TV ads, coupons, inserts influence shoppers

Washington—Shoppers said that Target, Wal-Mart and Sears had the best holiday TV ads in 2005, according to a survey conducted by BIGresearch for the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA).

Other top consumer favorites included ads from Budweiser, Kohl's, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, J.C. Penney, Kmart and Toys "R" Us.

According to the survey, 14.2 percent of consumers said their favorite holiday ads encouraged them to buy from that store. An additional 33 percent said they already planned to shop there.

The survey also showed that other forms of advertising had a strong influence on consumer purchasing decisions, including coupons (38.3 percent), newspaper inserts (35.2 percent), word of mouth (31.7 percent), advertising on national networks (25.8 percent) and direct mail (20.1 percent).

The survey found that consumer age played a role in the type of media that influenced purchasing decisions. For consumers ages 18-44, the No. 1 media preference was coupons, and for consumers ages 45 and over, newspaper inserts were preferred. In addition, 25.9 percent of young adults in the 18-24 range said they were influenced by direct mail, as well as 17.6 percent of adults over the age of 64.

"Companies can maximize their return on investment by determining which consumer they want to attract and going straight to the source with creative, focused advertising," BIGresearch Vice President of Strategy Phil Rist said in a statement.

The survey, conducted from Dec. 7-15, 2005, polled 7,324 consumers. The RAMA will release the findings from this year's holiday-advertising survey in mid December.