AIDA Model

The AIDA Model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) is the earliest documented mnemonic for customer engagement models (1898), originally used for advertising and marketing.

All advertising must attract attention, maintain interest, arouse desire, get action.

Elias St. Elmo Lewis

In the 1925 book Psychology Of Selling And Advertising, Edward Kellogg Strong credits Elias St. Elmo Lewis for this model, originating in 1898. This was generally accepted and propagated throughout the academic literature for almost a hundred years. In 2023, Akinori Iwamoto published a paper challenging the generally accepted history, and crediting the model to Frank H. Dukesmith and Arthur Frederick Sheldon.

As the AIDA model exists for more than a century, it has been used as an inspiration for countless similar models and derivatives. According to Thomas E. Barry’s 1987 article The Development of the Hierarchy of Effects: An Historical Perspective, the first variant emerged as soon as 1911, with Arthur Frederick Sheldon adding another step for “Satisfaction” and changing the mnemonic to AIDAS. Some other notable variants are ADICA (Attention, Desire, Inhibitions, Confidence, Action), AIDCA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Confidence, Action), ACCA (Awareness, Comprehension, Convition, Action). Barry also argues that the original mnemonic was AID, and that Lewis himself added the Action step later.

The model originated as a quick mnemonic to assist with advertising campaigns, and not backed by strong scientific research, although it was later taken both literally and seriously by academic researchers. According to Barry’s article, in the 1960s researchers were already complaining that the model is based on “sketchy views of the internal psychological process” and offering studies where some groups of consumers skipped certain steps, or did not go through the funnel in expected order.

The model is today mostly important as a historical reference and an precursor of a range of modern hierarchy-of-effects models and frameworks, including customer funnels and metrics frameworks such as the REAN model or the Pirate Metrics Funnel. Similarly to the AIDA model, the modern models are not backed by strong, systematic scientific research, but intuition and experience with a specific market segment. Note that this does not mean that the models are not useful - quite the opposite, but they should not be taken literally and with expectations that they universally apply. Similar to the AIDA model, these modern frameworks are sometimes used expecting a strict flow of consumer behaviours, instead as a mnemonic for planning and discussions. Also, similar to the AIDA model, modern models suffer from fragmentation and minor variations, with various authors adding, removing or reordering steps and claiming that this significantly improves the models, without any specific evidence to back up those claims.

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