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This paper brings structural modeling to the literature on financial research in marketing. I propose a dynamic investment-based model to understand the impact of advertising expenditures on stock returns and firm value. In addition, by interpreting advertising expenditures as an investment in brand capital, the approach in this paper provides a novel way to measure brand equity grounded in economic theory. Using the Euler equations from the firm's maximization problem, I derive closed-form expressions for the firm's equilibrium stock returns and market value, which depend on observable firm characteristics. I test the model's predictions by the generalized method of moments and data from a large cross section of publicly traded firms. The model is able to match simultaneously the pattern of average stock returns and firm values of portfolios sorted on advertising expenditures that standard asset pricing models cannot. The estimation results also show that brand equity accounts for a substantial fraction of firm market value (about 23%), and that this value varies substantially across industries. Implications of the findings for research at the intersection of marketing and finance are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between managerial exit from advertising agencies and advertisers and the dissolution of dyadic market ties. We examine how the amount and locus (advertiser vs. agency) of managerial exit and the hierarchical level from which exit occurs (executives vs. exchange managers) influence the likelihood that dyadic market ties will dissolve. We theorize that managerial exit disrupts dyadic market ties through its effect on three mechanisms of social capital: investments in relationship-specific assets; formal control over market ties; and the intensity of interaction with exchange partners. We consider how market tie fragility, the financial performance of advertisers, and the duration of market ties condition the effects of managerial exit on market tie dissolution. In short, we theorize about which managerial roles matter more to market tie dissolution, why they matter and when they matter. Using longitudinal data on 232 dyadic ties between advertisers and New York City advertising agencies, we find that the number of executives and exchange managers who exit on both sides of market ties affects tie dissolution. However, these effects are neither symmetrical between exchange partners nor uniform across the hierarchical levels from which exit occurs, and vary with the strength of market ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Germany has been identified as one of a few high-income countries that opposed a strong Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the WHO's first global public health treaty. This paper examines whether the tobacco industry had influenced the German position on the FCTC. Methods Analysis of previously confidential tobacco industry documents. Results The tobacco industry has identified Germany as a key target within its global strategy against the FCTC. Building on an already supportive base, the industry appears to have successfully lobbied the German government, influencing Germany's position and argumentation on key aspects of the FCTC. It then used Germany in its efforts to weaken the FCTC. The evidence suggests that the industry enjoyed success in undermining the Federal Health Ministry's position and using Germany to limit the European Union negotiating mandate. The tactics used by the tobacco industry included the creation of controversy between the financial, trade and other ministries on one side and the health ministry on the other side, the use of business associations and other front groups to lobby on the industry's behalf and securing industry access to the FCTC negotiations via the International Standardization Organization. Conclusion The evidence suggests that Germany played a major role in the tobacco industry's efforts to undermine the FCTC. Germany's position consistently served to protect industry interests and was used to influence and constrain other countries. Germany thus contributed significantly to attempts to weaken an international treaty and, in doing so, failed in its responsibility to advance global health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe and explain the advertising behavior seen as an activation strategy performed by Olympic sponsors in an emerging market context. It provides insights into the strategic goals related to sponsorship. Design/methodology/approach – The longitudinal approach taken opens the possibility to explore the dynamics of the strategies of Chinese as well as foreign firms in China. Theories on how sponsorship works cannot assist in explaining outcomes of sponsor-linked marketing, and since the actors involved rarely divulge their genuine intentions or their reciprocal contractual arrangements with the sponsored property, a new methodology has to be developed. A means-objective framework of sponsoring consists of six factors, which were applied to analyze 739 advertisements, articles and press releases collected from Chinese newspapers and Chinese official web pages covering a period of eight years (2001-2008) prior to the Olympic Games in Beijing. Based on a qualitative content analysis and nine means-objectives combinations in sponsorship patterns the authors discovered four dominant advertising strategies. Findings – Lead-time is a key concept when analyzing sponsor advertising strategies. The authors conclude from the longitudinal data that the time gap between signing the contract and the dates of the event influences the strategy of the sponsoring corporations. The authors also observe that the advertising content changes over time and the sponsors craft different “advertising strategies” in different periods. Within this context the authors categorized two different advertising strategies. The sponsors are assumed to conduct a “Short Advertising Strategy” different from the “Long Advertising Strategy.” Both are examples of activation strategies. Originality/value – Advertising strategies and activation seems to be dependent on the lead-time to the Olympic Games and the level of internationalization of the sponsoring firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New media campaigns hold great potential to grow public awareness about the dangers of tobacco use and advance tobacco control policies, including in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), which have shared in a decade of explosive growth in mobile and internet penetration. With the majority of deaths from the tobacco epidemic occurring in LMICs, new media must be harnessed both as an advocacy tool to promote social mobilisation around tobacco issues and to build public support for MPOWER policies. This paper examines three consecutive new media advocacy campaigns that used communication channels such as mobile SMS, Facebook and online advertising to promote tobacco control policies. It includes some of the lessons learned, such as the pitfalls of relying on viral growth as a strategy for obtaining reach and campaign growth; the challenge of translating strategies from traditional media to new media; and the importance of incorporating marketing strategies such as paid advertising, community organising or public relations. It also identifies some of the many knowledge gaps and proposes future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we analyze how generic advertising affects brand advertising and firm profits in differentiated oligopoly markets. We show that in the Crespi (2007) model only the high quality firm will use brand advertising when differentiation is vertical. We also demonstrate that when differentiation is horizontal, the equilibrium is likely to be more symmetric in terms of firm profits, spending on brand advertising, and firm response to generic advertising. Finally, we point out that generic advertising will increase expenditures on brand advertising when firms play a supermodular game. The results confirm that there are many reasons why generic advertising may increase firm spending on brand advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical problem, continually faced by managers in developing "effective" resource allocation plans, is that only limited partial information is available about the system under consideration on which to base these plans. This is particularly true in planning involving the limited information typically available on the relevant behavior and characteristics of large human populations. This paper develops the insight that partial information--which at first scrutiny appears to contain only severely limited information about the system--in many important cases actually contains (or stores) a great deal of the relevant total system information needed for planning (or control). This insight leads to powerful methods for retrieving the needed information about the behavior and characteristics of the total system from the information contained in the partial information data. In the present paper, we illustrate these information retrieval methods by developing and applying them to partially specified media audience exposure systems to retrieve certain critical total system information needed for media planning. More specifically, partial information on the audience of a combination of advertising media vehicles consisting of only two information quantities--the sum of the individual audiences, and the sum of the audiences of all pairs of media vehicles in the combination--is shown, in fact, to contain a significant amount of the information about the audience exposure pattern of the combination that is needed for media planning evaluation. Theory and methods are developed which retrieve, from these two quantities, operationally useful information on the unduplicated audience, the average exposure frequency, and the frequency distribution of audience exposure of the combination. The retrieval methods developed in this paper have been successfully applied to evaluating and developing "effective" media selection programs. These retrieval methods... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new empirical study of the effects of televised alcohol advertising and alcohol price on alcohol consumption. A novel feature of this study is that the empirical work is guided by insights from behavioral economic theory. Unlike the theory used in most prior studies, this theory predicts that restriction on alcohol advertising on TV would be more effective in reducing consumption for individuals with high consumption levels but less effective for individuals with low consumption levels. The estimation work employs data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and the empirical model is estimated with quantile regressions. The results show that advertising has a small positive effect on consumption and that this effect is relatively larger at high consumption levels. The continuing importance of alcohol taxes is also supported. Education is employed as a proxy for self-regulation, and the results are consistent with this assumption. The key conclusion is that restrictions on alcohol advertising on TV would have a small negative effect on drinking, and this effect would be larger for heavy drinkers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the effects of advertising based on economic cycles. To comprehend advertising effects in the restaurant industry from an economic cycle perspective, this study investigated both short- and long-run advertising effects under periods of economic contraction and expansion and compared those effects between the two economic periods. Design/methodology/approach – The data were collected from the COMPUSTAT database for the restaurant industry (SIC 5,812) from 1979 to 2010. To estimate the economic cycles, the 2005 year-based real gross domestic product (GDP) was used from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Also, all variables were depreciated by the value of the US dollar in 2005. For estimation, a single equation error correction model was used to examine the short-term and long-term effects of advertising. Findings – The results of this study indicated that both the short- and long-term effects of advertising on sales growth were more obvious in contraction periods than in expansion periods. However, the short-run effects of advertising on brand equity did not significantly differ between expansion and contraction periods. Further, the long-term effects of advertising on brand equity were greater in expansion periods than in contraction periods. The findings suggest that restaurant firms should not reduce their advertising budgets during periods of economic contraction to take advantage of superior sales growth outcomes during these periods. Practical implications – The results of this study provide restaurant managers with useful practical implications. During economic contraction periods, restaurant managers should not reduce advertising budgets to take an ascendant position in terms of sales growth. Though the net positive effect at year t + 1 of contraction periods was smaller than that of expansion periods for sales growth, this is temporal and the long-run positive effect on sales growth spreads into future periods. Thus, a counter-cyclical advertising strategy could compensate for reduced sales from weak customer demands during economic contraction periods. Originality/value – There have been many empirical studies on the advertising effect in the literature. However, this study examined whether the effects of advertising differ between economic expansion and contraction periods. This specificity is helpful for industrial practitioners as well as academic researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does advertising make markets more or less competitive? This paper lays out an econometric strategy for estimating the effect of advertising on prices that exploits seasonal demand and imperfect targeting of consumers. We find mostly negligible effects of advertising on prices at monthly frequency: among the 35 (of 131) product categories with sufficient advertising seasonality to justify second-stage estimation, only nine have a significant effect, and those are typically small. This finding is essentially the result of the much greater seasonality in advertising than price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on the management science papers "Optimal and Near Optimal Price and Advertising Strategies," by Ulf P. Welam, and "Diffusion Processes and Optimal Advertising Policy," by John P. Gould. The author compares the papers and offers his opinions based on the theories presented. He contends that Gould provided a closed form solution of the dynamic advertising policy and Welam did not. The author notes that continuous time formulations of dynamic optimization problems are often more tractable.

Copyright of Zer: Journal of Communication Studies / Revista de Estudios de Comunicacion / Komunikazio Ikasketen Aldizkaria is the property of Universidad del Pais Vasco and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Are advertising appropriations, as related to share of national income, at an all-time high? Most advertising men say "yes" without hesitation. But this is not true, as a distinguished business historian demonstrates in this article. Actually advertising's current share of national income is lower than in any decade from the 1890's through the 1930's. The author points out that this phenomenon is related to the fact that advertising expenditures in constant dollars go farther than thirty years ago. In fact, they result in 2½ times greater per capita exposure to advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recruitment of enlisted men and officers under the All-Volunteer Force concept costs approximately $620 million per year; of this amount approximately $100 million are in advertising expenditures. However, recently Congress and the General Accounting Office have expressed considerable concern over the lack of justification for such expenditures. The issue is further complicated by the recent recruiting shortfalls by all the services and the debate surrounding registration and a possible return to the draft. Finally, results of most profit-oriented sales research are difficult to apply to improving military recruiting efficiency due to the difference in the levels of rapport and credibility necessary to convince a potential recruit to invest several years of his life. This paper reports on modeling and implementation experience geared towards determining the proper allocation of resources between advertising and recruiters. This mix is especially crucial since Congress does not permit funds appropriated for advertising to be used for manpower or vice versa. The study consists of two parts: generation of response functions to estimate the number and mix of enlistments over time and geographically as a function of the various demographics, advertising expenditures and the number of recruiters; a nonlinear programming resource allocation model to improve the budget generation and budget execution capabilities in meeting and assessing the impact of the various multi-faceted quantity and quality goals. The basic model, with updating of the response function parameters, is being used by the Navy to aid in the generation and defense of its annual budget appropriations. Numerical results are given which are compared to the past allocations of the Navy and to results observed in industrial product marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper determines an optimal policy for investment in advertising for a firm that wishes to maximize its discounted profits. To that end, an integrated approach consisting of model formulation, empirical investigation, and optimization is carried out. A model of market share response to advertising is formulated as a first-order Markov process, with nonstationary transition probabilities. These probabilities are assumed to be a function of the advertising goodwill accumulated by the firm and its competitors. The model as specified is nonlinear in its parameters, and nonlinear regression techniques are applied to estimate them. It is shown that this nonlinear form offers, via likelihood ratio tests, a unique opportunity for testing the model, and in a resulting empirical test, the model is found to be consistent with the data. Given these empirical findings, an optimal advertising policy is derived by the use of optimal control theory. The managerial implications of the recommended multi-period policy arc examined, and the policy's sensitivity to managerial inputs and economic conditions is analyzed and illustrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The allocation of advertising expenditures by area and by media is a problem faced by most marketing organizations The problem with certain assumptions can be treated with some of the techniques of game theory In this paper several mathematical models will be described along with their solutions The models are theoretical and are based on various assumptions about the effect of advertising on sales The validity of these assumptions as well as the possible application of these models is discussed [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant number of online ads served by publishers are actually never seen by Internet users. This results in ineffective branding campaigns and a considerable waste of money for advertisers. In reaction, more and more advertisers use technologies to measure the viewability of advertising campaigns on publisher websites. This paper discusses how the adoption of such technologies could impact the economics of online advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass media campaigns can change attitudes and behaviours to improve population health. However, a key challenge is achieving share of voice in a complex and cluttered media environment. The aim of this study was to compare advertising expenditure on public health campaigns for obesity prevention (and related healthy eating and physical activity campaigns) with competing commercial categories of (a) sugary drinks, (b) artificially sweetened drinks and (c) diet/weight loss products and programmes. These commercial products may either undermine or dilute public health messages by directly contributing to poor health or confusing the public about the best ways to sustain a healthy lifestyle. Monthly estimates of advertising expenditure in Australian media (television, outdoor, cinema, radio, newspapers, magazines and digital) were obtained from Nielsen Media for 2016–18. Eligible public health advertising expenditure for the entire period (total AUD$27M) was vastly outweighed by the commercial categories of sugary drinks (AUD$129M) and diet/weight loss products and services (AUD$122M). Artificially sweetened drinks accounted for an additional AUD$23M of expenditure. These results highlight the need to rebalance the ratio of advertising to support public health in Australia through increased funding for obesity prevention and related campaigns, and critically, through government regulation to limit competing commercial advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Technology has transformed our lifestyles in dramatic and significant ways, including new and less expensive options for recruiting study participants. This study examines cost and participant differences between two recruitment sources, Craigslist (CL), and print newspapers (PNs). This paper also reviewed and compared studies involving clinical trials published since 2010 that recruited participants using CL alone or in combination with other methods.Method: Secondary data analyses from a parent study involving a randomized controlled trial of a mail-based intervention to promote self-change with problem drinkers.Results: Significant differences were found between CL and PN participants on most demographic and pretreatment drinking variables. While all participants had AUDIT scores suggestive of an alcohol problem and reported drinking at high-risk levels, CL participants had less severe drinking problem histories, were considerably younger, and had a higher socioeconomic status than PN participants. The total advertising costs for the 65 CL ads ($275) were significantly less than the 69 PN ads ($33, 311). The recruiting cost per eligible participant was vastly less expensive using CL ($1.46) compared to print newspaper ads ($116.88).Conclusions: Using CL is a viable recruitment method for soliciting participants, particularly those that are younger, for alcohol intervention studies. It is also less expensive than newspaper ads. When CL participants were recruited, they reported being slightly more confident to change their drinking than PN participants. Limitations of using CL are discussed, including that some initial ad responders gave inconsistent answers to similar questions and a few tried to enter the study more than once. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective This study tests relationships between the volume of advertisements (ads; public service announcements (PSAs)) employed in state antismoking campaigns, use of different themes and stylistic features in these PSAs, and state youth smoking prevalence between 1999 and 2005. Methods We merged commercially available data on televised antismoking PSAs that aired between 1998 and 2004 with data on state tobacco control activity to test the relationship between the volume and content of youth-targeted and general-targeted/adult-targeted antismoking PSAs on youth smoking prevalence, controlling for other tobacco control efforts. We use content analysis and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to assess which thematic and stylistic features employed in state antismoking PSAs are associated with reduced smoking prevalence. Results A 100-ad increase in the yearly volume of youth-targeted state antismoking PSAs was associated with a 0.1 percentage point decrease in state youth smoking rates in the following year. This relationship was driven by variation in state use of PSAs emphasising health consequences to self or others and anti-industry appeals. Controlling for appearances of these themes, use of graphic imagery and personal testimonials did not predict reduced smoking prevalence. Adult-targeted/general-targeted PSAs were not associated with youth smoking prevalence. Conclusions Youth-targeted state antitobacco PSAs that emphasise the health consequences of smoking (to oneself and others) and contain anti-industry appeals are associated with reduced youth smoking rates. Future work should avoid typologies that do not account for the co-occurrence of thematic and stylistic content in antitobacco PSAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the Industry research report published by the Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies (NPES) titled as "Worldwide Market for Print2.0: Global Opportunities in Publishing Printing and Marketing and Commercial Printing (2012-2021)". It talks about the market for publishing and printing and the revenue earned by it. It discusses the increasing digital media and the declining advertising sales.

The present research will introduce a new methodology of analyzing advertising's impact on GDP. By juxtaposing the discrepancies in the GDP measurement with the advertising expenditures in the US, the paper will show that there is a significant relationship between GDP's growth and adspend. Granger test of causality will establish the causality running from advertising to GDP. Based on that, it will be argued that advertising should be treated as an investment in both accounting and calculation of GDP by expenditure method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bultez and Naert (1988) provide an analytical example and several simulations that show profits to be more sensitive to advertising lag structure misspecification the higher the advertising goodwill elasticity. We explain how this result is consistent with our (Magat, McCann, and Morey 1986) result that a given amount of advertising error induced by misspecification causes greater reductions in profits the lower the advertising goodwill elasticity. We also use their simulation results to identify the pattern of prior advertising used in estimation as an important determinant of when misspecification matters in estimating advertising lag structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on connection between poetry and advertising, and its value on the world of business. Topics discussed include use of poetry in business schools to teach business studies including Babson College in Massachusetts, views of novelist Clare Morgan who suggests that poetry can help in business in detecting different modes of meaning and to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, and mentions that poetry also helps in decision-making.

While outdoor advertising is currently the fastest-growing traditional advertising medium, the value of billboards to the public has long been debated. Drawing on a conceptual framework developed by Farris and Albion (1980), contrasting two schools of thought about advertising's economic and societal role, this study reports a meta-analysis of more than 100 surveys of U.S. public opinion toward billboards, covering almost eight decades of findings from more than 100,000 participants. Variables analyzed include the degree to which the public believes billboards are informative, entertaining, irritating, and helpful to the economy; in need of more regulation; and beneficial overall. Results suggest that, both historically and currently, consumers view billboards positively, and a strong majority do not support billboard bans. Moreover, the overall results are more supportive of the notion that the public subscribes to the Advertising = Information school of thought as opposed to the Advertising = Market Power school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pharmaceutical marketing, which is primarily targeted at physicians, has been criticised because it may distort physician prescribing and thus potentially raise costs and/or worsen health. An alternative view, presented in this paper, is that successful marketing of pharmaceuticals can improve consumer welfare by increasing incentives for research and development (R&D) investment and by providing guidance to R&D to make it more consistent with consumer preferences. There are a number of arguments that support this view, despite impediments to pharmaceutical marketing such as the prohibited dissemination of off-label information in the US, difficulties in estimating potential pharmaceutical demand, and the long time lag between demand assessment and the introduction of new drugs. For example, physicians are often slow to modify their prescribing practices, even when new evidence-based practice guidelines are issued by prestigious organisations. Pharmaceutical promotion is likely to be particularly valuable because information plays a key role, is highly technical, and can change rapidly. Even consumer advertising can potentially improve health, for example, by improving patient compliance with drug therapy. In addition to disseminating information about the benefits of new therapies, an essential (and perhaps unique) role for pharmaceutical promotion is to encourage physicians and payers to pay closer attention to consumer needs (i.e. willingness to pay) for new medical technology. Moreover, successful marketing of pharmaceuticals increases the returns from R&D, thus increasing incentives to explore consumer demand and to contribute to basic research on the role of drug therapy. Consumer benefits from this process may be very large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper predicts an inverted-U relationship between concentration and advertising only for oligopolistic industries facing relatively less elastic demand curves. It rejects the inverted-U theory based on the hypothesis that the large firms collude and lends empirical support to the idea that causation runs from concentration to advertising intensity. By confirming that the effect of advertising on profitability is significant and greater for industries producing homogeneous goods than for those producing heterogeneous goods, this study fails to support the barriers-to-entry hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we take a view of advertising and certain other nonprice competition as public goods. This leads to a new fundamental justification of the zero price distribution of advertising, coupled with a mark-up of the advertised good as a disguised form of price discrimination which approximates that required for efficient pricing of a public good. Further, we present a numerical counterexample wherein the commonly-observed zero price distribution of advertising is shown to lead to higher consumer and seller welfare than its separate sales at cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-standing but much abused distinction between "informative" and other types of advertising is discussed in the paper. This difference is revealed in a differential effect on economic performance. There is considerable ambivalence in the literature on the efficiency aspects of advertising. While advertising is conceded to be a source of information - a sine qua non for smoothly functioning markets - it has been argued that certain types of advertising are anti-competitive in their effect. It has proved difficult for economists to drop the distinction and hence resulted in one of the researches. After a brief literature survey, section II develops a theoretical distinction between informative and goodwill advertising. Section III outlines a test of the hypothesis that the different kinds of advertising will have opposite effects on market performance. Section IV presents the results of this test. Section V summarizes and relates the results to other recent work on the economics of advertising.

Convenience goods are bought without much consideration or effort on the part of the consumer. Buyers don't try to get the best bargain when purchasing individual convenience items. Instead, they adapt their store choice habits so that they can expect, on average, good value for money in the long run. Store choice is governed by aggregate information which is received on the price levels of stores. This is embodied in store price images. A store price image is defined in the subsequent paper as a perceived difference between the store's price level and a reference level that consumers expect of stores about which they have no particular information. Store price images are learnt adaptively over time. We propose a theoretical model of store price image adaptation and a two-stage sales response model. According to the latter, a store's price image and advertising determine the number of customers attracted per period. Sales per visit, however, depend only on the prices actually observed in the store. For this sales model, we have studied the optimal price and advertising policy making simple assumptions of cost. Our main interest is the interaction between optimal advertising and price image. It turns out that image improvement is achieved mainly through pricing; increased advertising follows only after the price image has been improved. Therefore, as long as the price image is poor relative to some optimal equilibrium level, a larger portion of the marketing budget should be allocated to lower prices rather than to advertising. In phases where the price image declines towards the equilibrium, however, heavier advertising is profitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic effects of advertising have been a much studied and hotly debated topic for a number of years. By now, there is fairly general agreement that, inter alia, advertising is important as a barrier-to-entry, and that advertising does succeed in shifting demand for individual products, but there is little agreement as to the effect of advertising on aggregate consumption. There has been no effort made to examine by econometric methods the proposition that advertising has an impact on the aggregate consumption function. To undertake this is the purpose of this paper. Based on an analysis of advertising expenditures in the aggregate, the results suggest that advertising does in fact tend to increase consumption at the expense of saving. But as to what the causal mechanism underlying this is, can not be said. It may be that advertising actually succeeds in altering tastes, but then again it may be that advertising is simply serving to bring new goods and services to the attention of consumers.

In a recent article Peter Doyle's [8] survey of the literature concerning the economic effects of advertising suggests that the failure of standard economic logic in this controversial area is due partly to the lack of a time dimension in the analysis and partly to the treatment of price and advertising solely as substitute methods of expanding sales. As a consequence, and central to the advertising controversy, considerable disagreement exists concerning the effect of advertising on the prices of monopolistic firms. This paper proposes an alternative approach to the analysis of advertising which demonstrates that, when time lags are explicitly introduced into demand functions, advertising can be an effective complement to a price decrease, thereby producing a lower optimum price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News reports carrying positive or negative sentiment about a firm influence its stock market performance. This study examines how two firm-controllable marketing factors, advertising and marketing capability, moderate the relationship between news stories and firm stock returns. Analysis of a panel data set of more than 7,000 firm-month observations indicates asymmetric and complementary moderating roles of the two marketing variables: advertising reinforces the favorable impact of positive news on abnormal stock returns, and marketing capability mitigates the adverse impact of negative news. Moreover, these moderating effects operate through different stakeholders. Whereas the moderating effect of marketing capability is due to its influence on customers and thus affects the level and volatility of future cash flows, advertising moderates the effect of news through individual investors' attention and response to the news. The econometric analysis accounts for potential endogeneity between news reports, stock returns, and marketing variables, and the results are robust to alternative measures and analysis approaches. The findings suggest the need for managers to broaden their stakeholder focus when evaluating advertising;s returns and to communicate the value of marketing capability to investors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Tobacco-control policies have been suggested to reduce smoking among adolescents. However, there is limited evidence on the real-world costs of implementation in different settings. In this study, we aimed at estimating the costs of school smoking bans, school prevention programmes and non-school bans (smoking bans in non-educational public settings, bans on sales to minors and bans on point-of-sale advertising), implemented in Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Portugal, for 2016. Methods We retrospectively collected costs related to the inspection, monitoring and sanctioning activities related to bans and educational activities related to smoking prevention programmes. We used an 'ingredients-based' approach, identifying each resource used, quantity and unit value for one full year, under the state perspective. Costs were measured at national, regional, local and school-level and were informed by data on how these activities were performed in reality. Results Purchasing power parities adjusted-costs varied between €0.02 and €0.74 (average €0.24) per person (pp) for bans implemented outside schools. Mean costs of school smoking bans ranged from €3.31 to €34.76 (average €20.60), and mean costs of school educational programmes from €0.75 to €4.65 (average €2.92). Conclusions It is feasible to estimate costs of health policies as implemented in different settings. Costs of the tobacco control policies evaluated here depend mainly on the number of person-hours allocated to their implementation, and on the scale of intervention. Non-school bans presented the lowest costs, and the implementation of all policies cost up to €36 pp for 1 year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on a study which investigated the distributional effects of generic advertising on related commodity markets conducted by Henry W. Kinnucan and Yuliang Miao. Explanation of the case of two related goods cited in the study; Questionable modeling choices in the analysis of the distributional impacts of fluid milk advertising on a set of related goods; Remarks on the use of a benefit-cost ratio.

The purpose of our study is to explore what relationship, if any, exists between advertising and economic growth. Endogenous growth theory (Romer 1990) is proposed as a possible solution to this 50-year debate. Using endogenous growth theory, we develop a model that links advertising to incentives for business innovation and for overall levels of information and knowledge in society. Results indicate that advertising expenditures offer significant explanatory power for long-term economic growth for a panel of 64 countries. This study contributes to the debate in two major ways: (1) by empirically showing that on a macrolevel, advertising expenditures and economic growth are related; and (2) by developing a theoretical economic growth model that demonstrates that not only are advertising expenditures related to economic growth, but that they can bring about economic growth. Finally, by providing a refinement of how marketing actions may positively affect the economy, the study contributes to the broader debate of advertising's role in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year billions of dollars are spent on advertising that uses humor to sell products. How is that spending decision made? Despite much research examining humor effects in advertising, many advertisers make the decision on faith. Many past studies lack a clear conceptual focus to guide the investigation of humor effects in advertising. The authors examine humor effectiveness by using a conceptual framework adapted from Speck along with a product-contingent focus. The resulting approach affords a clearer understanding of the appropriate use of humor through the examination of (1) the humor mechanisms employed, (2) the intentional relatedness of humor to the ad or product, and (3) the type of product advertised. The descriptive results of the study indicate that current practice for many advertisers is to employ incongruity-based humor in a humor-dominant context. That practice is contrasted with others to examine the influence of humor on the effectiveness of print advertisements for different product groups. Study results indicate that current advertising practices may not be the most effective in terms of advertisement performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic theory and conventional marketing wisdom suggest many factors that are responsible for variations in advertising and promotion costs among firms and industries. This article tests empirically the explanatory power of several of these factors. The resulting descriptive models are encouragingly consistent across a wide variety of industrial and consumer businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors extend prior research on explaining variations in the intensity of marketing communication (i.e., advertising and promotional expenditures/sales) with a simple model estimated on cross-sectional time-series data. Analyses on firm-level data pooled at the industry level, performed for each of several industries belonging to different markets, attest to the model's explanatory power. Model validation analyses show an impressive similarity of model parameters and goodness of fit across split-half data samples for each industry analyzed. Further, for all industries belonging to a given market, the results indicate remarkable consistency in the signs of the associations between marketing communication intensity and (1) market share, (2) market growth, and (3) their interaction. However, this consistency does not hold across all markets. Plausible explanations for these results are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine some of the literature in Economics that concerns itself with the economics of advertising and to present some of the public policy implications of the results of these studies. It is found that it is unlikely that advertising expenditures are subject to increasing returns to scale, thus probably do not lead to an increased concentration of industry for this reason. A study is presented that deals with competition by advertising expenditures and product differentiation in the U.S. cigarette industry. It is found that advertising expenditures, during the 1956-68 period, were not effective in obtaining sales from competitors, although they may have had the affect of inducing new customers to buy the product. The effect of anti-smoking commercials is examined, and it is found that, although they may have had some effect on cigarette smoking, it is doubtful that they provide the impetus for the decreases in advertising expenditures in this particular industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Exposure to advertisements cannot fully explain the associations between young children's dietary intake and the time they spend in front of the television. It is therefore of importance to study television content other than advertisements in this aspect. The present study aimed to examine the nature and extent of verbal and visual appearances of foods and beverages in children's television programmes on Icelandic public service television.Design: A total of 27 h of children's programmes (domestic and internationally produced) were watched. All verbal and visual appearances of foods and beverages were coded, as well as the context in which the foods/beverages were discussed or appeared.Setting: Children's programmes on Icelandic public service television.Subjects: Two food groups were of special interest for their importance from a public health perspective: high-calorie and low-nutrient (HCLN) foods and fruits and vegetables (F&V). The χ 2 test and logistic regression were performed to analyse if the occurrence of the two groups was associated with the context where foods/beverages appeared.Results: Of the 125 different programmes, a food or beverage appeared in 86 %. Of the total food appearances (n 599), HCLN foods accounted for 26 % and F&V for 23 %. HCLN foods were presented as desirable by appearing more frequently with child characters (P<0·01) than F&V.Conclusions: Public service television has the potential to improve the way food and eating is presented in children's programmes, as young childhood is a critical period for founding healthy habits for later life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Importance: Single cigarettes, which are sold without warning labels and often evade taxes, can serve as a gateway for youth smoking. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 gives the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate the manufacture, distribution, and marketing of tobacco products, including prohibiting the sale of single cigarettes. To enforce these regulations, the FDA conducted over 335,661 inspections between 2010 and September 30, 2014, and allocated over $115 million toward state inspections contracts.Objective: To examine differences in single cigarette violations across states and determine if likely correlates of single cigarette sales predict single cigarette violations at the state level.Design: Cross-sectional study of publicly available FDA warning letters from January 1 to July 31, 2014.Setting: All 50 states and the District of Columbia.Participants: Tobacco retailer inspections conducted by FDA (n = 33 543).Exposures For Observational Studies: State cigarette tax, youth smoking prevalence, poverty, and tobacco production.Main Outcomes and Measures: State proportion of FDA warning letters issued for single cigarette violations.Results: There are striking differences in the number of single cigarette violations found by state, with 38 states producing no warning letters for selling single cigarettes even as state policymakers developed legislation to address retailer sales of single cigarettes. The state proportion of warning letters issued for single cigarettes is not predicted by state cigarette tax, youth smoking, poverty, or tobacco production, P = .12.Conclusions and Relevance: Substantial, unexplained variation exists in violations of single cigarette sales among states. These data suggest the possibility of differences in implementation of FDA inspections and the need for stronger quality monitoring processes across states implementing FDA inspections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Despite declines in overall US cigarette consumption, the menthol cigarette market share has increased in recent years. Advertising contributes to menthol initiation and use, but little has been done to characterise menthol cigarette advertising outside of the point of sale. Methods Two full-service advertising firms were used to develop a library of menthol cigarette advertisements (ads) over a 9-month period ( June 2012-February 2013) in the USA. The volume of ads, media channel (direct mail, print, online, email), estimated spend and households reached was summarised overall and by brand in 2013. Direct mail, email and print ads were coded for content and the target audience of print publications was examined. Results Over the study period, 205 menthol cigarette ads were identified with estimated expenditures exceeding US$31 million, with 70% spent on direct mail ads. Over 90% of ads promoted Camel, Marlboro and Newport menthol cigarettes. A majority (87%) of direct mail ads contained coupons or other incentives known to appeal to price-sensitive customers. Only two brands' print ads appeared during this period: Newport ads focused on themes of sociability and sexuality, and were placed in magazines targeting African-Americans and younger consumers; American Spirit print ads were placed in general interest magazines and predominantly stressed the 'natural' aspects of their brand. Discussion The tobacco industry continues to spend millions of dollars promoting menthol cigarettes through channels that preferentially target vulnerable subgroups, such as African-Americans and younger consumers. Public health campaigns to educate and combat the influence of menthol advertising are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The success of a clinical trial is often dependant on whether recruitment targets can be met in the required time frame. Despite an increase in research into the benefits of exercise in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS), no trial has reported detailed data on effective recruitment strategies for large-scale randomised controlled trials. The main purpose of this report is to provide a detailed outline of recruitment strategies, rates and estimated costs in the Exercise Intervention for Multiple Sclerosis (ExIMS) trial to identify best practices for future trials involving multiple sclerosis (MS) patient recruitment.Methods: The ExIMS researchers recruited 120 PwMS to participate in a 12-week exercise intervention. Participants were randomly allocated to either exercise or usual-care control groups. Participants were sedentary, aged 18-65 years and had Expanded Disability Status Scale scores of 1.0-6.5. Recruitment strategies included attendance at MS outpatient clinics, consultant mail-out and trial awareness-raising activities.Results: A total of 120 participants were recruited over the course of 34 months. To achieve this target, 369 potentially eligible and interested participants were identified. A total of 60 % of participants were recruited via MS clinics, 29.2 % from consultant mail-outs and 10.8 % through trial awareness. The randomisation yields were 33.2 %, 31.0 % and 68.4 % for MS clinic, consultant mail-outs and trial awareness strategies, respectively. The main reason for ineligibility was being too active (69.2 %), whilst for eligible participants the most common reason for non-participation was the need to travel to the study site (15.8 %). Recruitment via consultant mail-out was the most cost-effective strategy, with MS clinics being the most time-consuming and most costly.Conclusions: To reach recruitment targets in a timely fashion, a variety of methods were employed. Although consultant mail-outs were the most cost-effective recruitment strategy, use of this method alone would not have allowed us to obtain the predetermined number of participants in the required time period, thus leading to costly extensions of the project or failure to reach the number of participants required for sufficient statistical power. Thus, a multifaceted approach to recruitment is recommended for future trials.Trial Registration: International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Registry number: ISRCTN41541516 ; date registered: 5 February 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a study conducted by the authors on the influence of obesity related outdoor advertising by neighborhood race and income. Topics discussed include income disparities in outdoor food advertising, increased density of unhealthy beverage advertising in low-income communities, promotion of healthier food choices by public services, and the impact of advertising on health promotion in neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses outcomes of national public health advertising campaigns supported by Public Health England (PHE). Topics explored include the involvement of advertising agency Freuds in several British public health marketing campaigns, remarks from PHE marketing director Sheila Mitchell regarding the selection of corporate marketing agencies that would handle said campaigns, and the effectiveness of the Dry January campaign introduced by national charity Alcohol Concern.

The search neutrality debate questions the ranking methods of search engines. We analyze the issue when content providers offer content for free, but get revenues from advertising. We investigate the noncooperative game among competing content providers under different ranking policies. When the search engine is not involved with high-quality content providers, it should adopt neutral ranking, also maximizing user quality-of-experience. If the search engine controls high-quality content, favoring its ranking and adding advertisement yield a larger revenue. Though user perceived quality may not be impaired, the advertising revenues of the other content providers drastically decrease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]