Using judgment analysis to improve consultant/client understanding: An advertising application

Abstract

This study uses regression‐based judgment analysis to develop decision profiles for a matched group of 22 clients and their advertising agency representatives. We compared agencies and clients according to five criteria for a successful advertising campaign: market research, media planning, message and creativity, budget, and agency/client working relationship. Considered in the aggregate, agencies and clients showed solid cognitive consensus. However, the 22 individual working partnerships revealed striking cognitive handicaps: agency/client partners agreed only moderately about campaign criteria, had little insight into each others’ decision values, and did not self‐report their own values accurately. We analyzed several agency/client partnerships in detail to show the implications of such cognitive misunderstandings, and to support our overall recommendation that judgment analysis form a central part of agency performance audits.