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There can be no doubt of the need for strategically positioning a brand prior to the preparation of advertising and for conducting research to help in the formulation of that strategy. But the real issues are not that these should be done, but rather how they should be done. Basically, hard data, based on research from representative samples of the market universe, should be used to answer both explicitly and precisely each of four key issues revolving the competitor milieu, sources of business, market target, and buying incentives. Done properly, the probability of creating more effective advertising is enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic marketing planning has not received the same objective informational support as that given to the operational level of decision making. This article focuses on the identification of appropriate external sources of planning information and the development of interrelated information subsystems to effectively incorporate environmental information into the strategic planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This approach to "product positioning," or drawing a profile of the users of competitive brands, goes beyond the usual demographics and is based on consumer patterns of purchasing and product-use designated "behavioral life-styles." For most major brands, the basic data are already available at low cost from syndicated services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has often been alleged that advertising people are faddists, that they "jump on the bandwagon" whenever a new creative idea comes along. By careful statistical analysis of advertising formats that have appeared in two consumer magazines, the authors have tested the validity of this charge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management has had to endorse huge investment spending programs on new product development to insure market position and profits for the future. This places a tremendous burden upon the New Product Department. This article shows why the responsibilities for communicating and administering the technical development phases should be assigned to the central Marketing Research Department. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the changes in the buying market that require a reconsideration of advertising approaches. The article discusses approaches to advertising, from loud, attention getting advertisements, to long, over-informative treatises on the benefits of one product over another. This article proposes that busier consumers require a different approach and that approach depends heavily on brand image. Images fall into three categories, subjective (how the consumer identified with the object), objective (an emotional appeal), and literal (a clear, visual brand identifier). It is no longer necessary for successful products to simply choose a brand name, but the image creation and advertising behind it requires deliberate planning.

The article discusses the place of wholesaling in the larger context of distribution in the United States from 1929 to 1954. Reviewing the statistics since the year 1939, the author seeks to define the source of the increase in wholesaling success, asking if the increases are to be attributed to the increase in prices, the overall economy, or if the wholesale market has gained market position. The article addresses changes in business, wholesale expenses, the revolution in food distribution, and the advent of chain stores. The article addresses the wholesale response to chain stores through retailer owned wholesale houses and voluntary wholesaling, using the establishment of Super Valu Stores, Inc. as an illustration.

The article discusses a survey of bread buying habits of housewives. According to the author, the survey is significant because of its applicability in other markets and for the research methodology employed, which successfully reflects the motivation behind the purchase decisions. The article addresses the results as they relate to brand competition, brand loyalty, previous brand preferences, reasons for product abandonment, and product quality issues. The implications of this study in terms of advertising, marketing strategy, and market positioning are discussed.

The article reports on a brand preference survey questionnaire and its applications in marketing and sales volume forecasting. The questionnaire is primarily used in food consumption research. The article addresses potential difficulties and challenges associated with this type of self-administered research. A nonrespondent bias is assumed due to the frequency of response, which is typically around 50%. The reproducibility of sampling data is questioned due to random response error and sampling error.

Attempts at relating personality variables to consumer behavior have generally been disappointing [1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 29, 31]. Robertson and Myers [24, p. 167] concluded "that at best personality variables, as measured by a standardized, normative, self-designating personality inventory, have little, if any, relationship to innovative behavior." However, acceptance of the conclusion that personality variables have little, if any, explanatory value or predictive utility with respect to consumer behavior would be without justification. Investigators in the typical study of this relationship usually administer a broad-coverage personality inventory and attempt to correlate responses with statements of product use or preference. However, in most cases, no a priori thought is directed to how, or especially why, personality should or should not be related to given aspects of consumer behavior. Moreover, most of the studies which report statistically significant findings usually do so on the basis of post-hoc picking and choosing out of large data arrays [4, 17, 18, 29]. In conclusion, low dogmatic individuals were found to be significantly more likely to be innovators than high dogmatic individuals. To the extent that such innovators are also more likely to prefer objective information, advertisers seeking a market position for an innovation ought to focus on factual information rather than on irrelevancies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a new method of empirical classification, shows how it is used to develop a consumer typology, and tests the sensitivity of the typology to various changes in assumptions, operations, and procedures. These operational effects are considered from the viewpoint of their significance in typology generation and for the long-run potential of classification methods and procedures in marketing and market segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a method for measuring the growth of markets that overcomes many of the limitations inherent in the use of absolute and relative measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult, particularly in mass retailing, to convince shoppers to open their pocketbooks and make their purchases from displays. This article discusses what can be done in advertising to attract and build steady customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on developments in the law trade-marks and unfair competition. In a competitive economy where each manufacturer seeks to maintain or improve his market position, the devices which facilitate his task are of great social and economic importance. Superiority of goods is not itself sufficient, for the manufacturer must find a way of impressing the identity of his product on the public consciousness. Through a symbol associated with his goods, the trade-mark, he finds a legally protected means to this end.

This paper formulates a model for determining the optimal allocation of a given advertising budget over M interacting market segments and a time domain of T periods. Guidance for budget size optimization is provided via a shadow price. The basic input parameters are in terms of sales saturation levels and advertising elasticities, concepts experienced advertising executives understand and are willing to estimate. Economic and political developments in Western Europe are increasing the interactions among geographically defined segments, and recent development in discrimination techniques may soon make market segmentation a practical strategy for the United States market. In relation to the time domain, the simplistic and often unrealistic constraint of a constant carryover effect is relaxed in that current advertising is hypothesized to generate sales both by creating new customers and by interacting with the residual effects of past advertising (goodwill) thus reinforcing preferences of past customers. This interactive formulation relating past and future expenditures allows a model user greater flexibility in specifying the relationship between advertising and sales. The mathematical programming technique used is a form of convex programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As management science models are developed in marketing, they make demands for more sophisticated inputs from the behavioral sciences. This is particularly true in the area of advertising media models. A continuing behavioral research program to develop estimates of repetition response functions for media models is reviewed. The program finds functions which differ importantly in level, slope and shape depending on the measure of response, market segment, product type, brand, advertising format, advertising illustration, advertisement color, media scheduling, ad appeal, and competitive situation. It is argued that such response function variations, found in both laboratory and field research, should be represented in media models. To illustrate this point, the results of a study of repetitive effects of one-sided (supportive) and two-sided (refutational) competitive advertisements are applied to runs of the MEDIAC planning system. Inclusion of the behavioral data produces favorable changes in MEDIAC output in terms of schedules and schedule results. The potential of further interaction between behavioral data and management science models is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the Section 7 of Clayton Act amended to limit asset acquisitions. Acquisitions of stock of two or more corporations were similarly limited. A failure to include within this control the corporate combination techniques of asset purchase, merger or consolidation led to a complete frustration of legislative purpose. The change makes clear that even in cases where the corporations had been engaged in competition as to all the products manufactured or services rendered by each, the acquisition would not be condemned unless the effect might be a substantial lessening of competition in any section of the country. Therefore, it would seem that the market position of the acquiring corporation, the number of remaining competitors and the strength of each, and difficulty of new entry into the market should also be considered.