The Search for a Good Measure of Magazine Readership: The TGI-Simmons Controversy

Magazine readership has been important to the advertising field for a long time. Interested parties have included agencies, clients and the magazines. With the introduction of Target Group Index (TGI) the routine use of W. R. Simmons and Associates syndicated services has been questioned as well as what “readership” really means.

This project attempts to accomplish three objectives: (1) develop a few normative standards for measuring magazine readership. (2) compare TGI and Simmons in terms of their performance against these standards, (3) develop some reasoning for where there are, in some cases, substantial discrepancies between results that are designed to measure the same construct. The authors wish to thank Dr. Alan D. Fletcher of the Department of Advertising, University of Tennessee, for his helpful comments.