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This study employed content analysis to examine the use of nutrient content, health, and structure/function claims found in food advertisements of high circulation magazines published between 1998 and 2000. Overall, food marketers made substantial use of nutrient content claims in their ads, but very limited use of health claims, despite a growing number of FDA-authorized categories. Marketers' far greater utilization of similar-sounding, but less-stringent, structure/function claims may be attributable to a more relaxed regulatory environment for structure/function claims and avoidance of potential regulatory risk associated with health claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Account planning in the United States is now part of the mainstream agency landscape. The planning field has evolved from the original British conceptualization of the 1960s and 1970s. Now planners are central to client business strategy development and also accountable for the outcomes of the agency's products. In light of increased demands by shareholders, holding companies, and market analysts on agencies for accountability, this study examines how the work of account planners in U.S. agencies is currently and should be evaluated. The study reports results of a national survey of U.S. planners regarding these questions. The study found that there are three general factors that planners say are currently being used to evaluate their work: (1) feedback from creatives, clients, and account teams; (2) traditional advertising campaign measures; and (3) awards and press of the three, the traditional advertising campaign measures factor accounts for most of the variance in responses. Planners rate the feedback factor as most important, however. Overall, awards and press were not a major consideration in evaluating the work of planners. These finding were consistent when planners were asked how they feel their work should be evaluated: For the most part, it appears that planners feel that the way their work is currently being evaluated is the way it should be evaluated. The study concludes with suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-cultural research on advertising has called attention to the important role that core societal values have on advertising production and reception. This study focuses on a core American cultural value, rugged individualism. Drawing on recent scholarship that emphasizes the rhetorical, mythical, and metaphorical bases of advertising imagery, the inquiry identifies seven bipolar tensions underlying the expression of rugged individualism in contemporary print advertisements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies address how companies should react when celebrity endorsers with whom they wish to associate are blameless or blameworthy for causing negative events (e.g., accidents). Research findings on stigmas suggest a linear endorser blame-company evaluation relationship, such that companies should associate (disassociate) with endorsers who have low (high) levels of blame for negative events. In contrast, research findings on defensive distortions suggest a nonmonotonic blame-evaluation relationship: Owing to the tendency to downgrade low blame persons so that they seem deserving of bad fate, companies benefit from associating with moderate, rather than low or high, blame celebrities. The current research suggests that the stage of the company-endorser relationship influences the pattern of findings and the type of endorser decisions companies should make. In Study 1 (n=121), consistent with stigma research, companies fared better when dismissing existing endorsers with high blame and keeping those with low blame. In Study 2 (n=108), consistent with research on defensive distortions, when making decisions about potential endorsers, companies fared best when hiring low blame candidates and worst when rejecting moderate blame candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Target marketing is an increasingly crucial component of marketing strategy, particularly given the expanding cultural diversity of the nation's population. Prior research suggests marketers need to consider the nontarget market (consumers who perceive themselves not to be the target of an advertisement) as well as the target market. Further, researchers have called for a more meaning-based approach to understanding advertising and consumer behavior. The authors therefore explore the meanings created by target and nontarget viewers of advertising targeting black, white, and gay/lesbian cultures. Their results show that asymmetries in cultural expertise, power, distinctiveness, and stigmatization among those cultural groups influence the meanings created by target and nontarget viewers of ads targeting those groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the typical account longevity is short, agencies should anticipate their likelihood of loss, seek to forestall and invest in their client relationships. A model is proposed for examining account lifetimes, which can offer guidance on the likely retention of future accounts. The impact of agency structural characteristics on longevity is also examined, and compared for both U.S. and U.K. markets. Results for both markets indicate that cumulative account dissolution increases at a decreasing rate over time. Greater account longevity is associated with larger agency size (both in terms of agency billings and employees), and agency age but not with stability of billings growth. Evidence suggests that several structural characteristics of agencies reflect the motivation and/or ability to maintain accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, businesses became aware of the 43 million disabled consumers as a source of concern and additional expense, but not as a salient market segment. Advertisers have yet to recognize that by learning more about the communication needs of the disabled, they can devise strategies to reach that large and generally ignored population of consumers. The authors report a study comparing mobility-disabled with nondisabled consumers in terms of media usage, attitudes toward advertising, and media needs. The results show several significant differences between the two groups. Implications for advertising practitioners are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A continuing difficulty in regulating corporate advocacy advertising is distinguishing between political and commercial speech. An article by Cutler and Muehling argues that the competitive impact of an advertisement should be a factor in determining whether a corporate advocacy advertisement is commercial or political speech. If a corporate ad primarily benefits the ad sponsor, the ad is likely to be considered commercial speech, Cutler and Muehling say. If the ad benefits a larger industry or society, Cutler and Muehling would call the ad political speech. This comment argues that the Cutler and Muehling proposal helps little to illuminate or modify controlling Supreme Court criteria for distinguishing political and commercial speech. The comment also argues that the vagueness of the Cutler and Muehling proposal would permit the unconstitutional regulation of corporate political speech by misclassifying it as commercial speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the persuasive impact of comparative advertising has produced inconsistent results. Consequently, researchers have suggested lack of credibility and the need for higher involvement as two problems which might impede the persuasive impact of comparative advertising. However, virtually no empirical evidence comparing the effects of comparative advertising to non-comparative advertising when different levels of involvement are activated exists. In addition, little research has examined whether source credibility enhances the persuasive impact of comparative advertising. Attribution theory provided the framework for the experiment reported in this paper. Experimental results suggest that when higher involvement is activated and a source of higher credibility is included in the advertisements, comparative advertising for a new brand has a more positive effect on purchase intentions than non-comparative advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a simple methodology for detecting and measuring deception. Actual impressions of subjects exposed to advertising rather than the opinions of "experts" are used. Newspaper advertising is used as a stimulus and substantial evidence of deception regarding price is found. Further, the results indicate that simple "one price" advertising themes may cause greater deception than complicated pricing structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, attention has been focused on examining the implications of changing women's roles for advertising strategy. The study reported in this paper compares magazine readership habits of two small matched samples of working and non-working wives in the U.S. and France. No major differences emerge in the frequency and type of magazines read by working and non-working wives in either country. Thus emphasis on magazines as the major advertising vehicle does not necessarily imply a lopsided emphasis on non-working wives, as might have been expected, due to potentially greater time pressures as a working wife. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relative influences of corporate ethics codes, Machiavellianism, and gender on various components of sales professionals' decision making in ethical situations. The results from a mail survey of American Marketing Association members suggest that the ethical climate of an organization influences a salesperson's perceptions of an ethical problem and his/her perceptions of alternative courses of action. The most ethically sensitive salespeople were found to be more agreeable with both punitive and nonpunitive types of remedial actions and less agreeable with a no-action alternative. The results also revealed a negative relationship between Machiavellianism and deontological norms. [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]

This article makes a critical examination of the economic case made for the prohibition of individual resale price maintenance (IRPM) in 1964. The Resale Prices Act had major implications for the future structure of British retailing and was lobbied for by multiple grocery retailers. This article demonstrates how a government enquiry which preceded the legislation privileged one side of the debate and marginalised other – arguably more rigorous – analysis. The article endorses a central role for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and is a case study of the role of economic theory in business–government relations and the development of economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Sales Executives Club of New York that believes that its function is to help its members to become more knowledgeable about the sales profession, assist them in finding solutions to sales issues and problems, and to encourage them to stay competitive since today's marketing strategies are increasingly requiring faster implementation time. The Club was founded in 1932 by Thomas J. Watson, then president of IBM. Watson proposed the formation of a club or association that could serve as a nucleus and source for the development of better selling methods and for the establishment of selling as a profession with sound underlying fundamental principles. In its approach to the public, the Club engages in extensive public relations activities, sending out assorted public relations releases to local media, supplying guest speakers for television talk shows and having its members speak at college and high school career sessions. The Club publishes "The Sales Executive," a monthly magazine that it affectionately identifies as a "news magazine of sales, marketing, and management".

Existing literature has identified a number of exogenous advantages that enabled US firms to dominate the global film industry. This article explores how these firms actually operated in their largest foreign market, and in doing so looks for evidence of endogenous advantages that may have enabled some US firms to outperform their rivals. It finds that firms which developed the most distinct local element to their production portfolios typically achieved a greater share of the British market. However, it does not find evidence that locally-based producers were any more effective at developing such locally-themed films than those based in Hollywood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although considerable attention has been paid to the subject of scholarship in other disciplines, relatively little attention has been devoted to this vital topic in marketing. Moreover, while there has been attention paid to the influence of marketing research on pedagogy, the impact of input from learning environments into research has virtually been ignored. There are increasing pressures on higher education that brings to question the sustainability of scholarship. This paper briefly reviews the historical evolution and the modern conceptualization of scholarship, and presents an inclusive process model of marketing scholarship that attempts to address these pressures. Suggestions are made for implementing the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While researchers have explored the relationship between market orientation and firm performance in commercial organizations, such studies in non-profit organizations are scarce. This paper uses a structural equation mode! to show the impact of market orientation on the performance of nonprofit organizations. To conduct the study, the authors employed the Kohli, Jaworski and Kumar (1993) market-orientation scale (MARKOR). Data for this study was collected by mail survey. One thousand market orientation surveys were sent to the executive directors of non-profit organizations across the U.S. One hundred forty-eight non- profit agencies responded to the survey, representing 14.8% response rate. The performance criterion was based on the self-stated funding activities for the non-profit organizations collected in this sample. Results indicated that the Kohli, Jaworski and Kumar (1993) market-orientation scale provided a good measure of market orientation in non-profit organizations. The model of the relationship between market orientation and the performance of a non-profit organization supported the theory. The managerial implications are discussed for non-profit organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent demographic changes indicate the increasing importance of ethnic minority consumers in American society. A review of practices of marketing towards ethnic minorities reveals several perspectives: traditional marketing, separated marketing, integrated marketing and multicultural marketing. The article adapts research in international marketing and proposes a framework of four distinctive strategies for marketing to ethnic consumers: total standardization, product adaptation, advertising adaptation and ethnic marketing. Factors that influence the selection and implementation of the strategies are examined, such as product preference, ethnic identification, acculturation and advertising responses. Managerial implications for firms to reach ethnic markets are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the results of a study conducted within several companies in the U.S. and Great Britain with regards to the factors that makes a strategic marketing effective as of August 2000. The first aim of the study was to establish the ways in which British and U.S. companies characterize their strategic marketing effectiveness and their corporate culture and beliefs. Overall, the results are remarkably similar, the differences being in emphasis in the factors that emerged rather than in fundamental structure, thus supporting the underlying theory that corporate culture characteristics transcend the two continents, and should not be subject to assumptions of ethnocentricity. The second aim of the research was to test for a relationship between the effectiveness of the firm in the marketplace and the predominant culture within the organization. The results for both Britain and the U.S. are almost identical.