Search

1. AMA membership is concentrated in a few geographic areas (four states account for more than half the membership). 2. Although in 1937-the first year of its existence-the AMA had a heavy academic flavor, education now accounts for only 15 per cent of the membership, with most of the other members in research positions in industry. 3. More than a third of the members report advanced academic degrees. 4. The AMA's growth curve shows positive acceleration, with most of the additional members coming from industry. 5. Expressed interest in serving on AMA committees seems to be limited, with the research and teaching techniques committees most popular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article gives an overview of the current membership state of the American Marketing Association (AMA) as of 1973. Since 1942, membership in the organization has grown more than ten times to 11,854 members, with half of those being from only seven states. Membership from citizens of foreign countries makes up close to 13% of the membership. One of the largest comparisons the author makes, is the ratio of men to women for certain classifications such as academic rank of college faculty members and college degree earned. Women make up less than ten percent of the AMA membership. The author also looks at the types of industries that contain AMA members.

The author presents his views on the formation of a standard system of geographic units to use in marketing analysis. According to the author, an American Marketing Association committee was formed to evaluate and submit a recommendation for a standard system. After consideration, the committee decided that the United States Post Office's ZIP code system proved most effective.

The article discusses profit maximization in advertising. The author attempts to distinguish between advertisements (ads) that will work from those that will not. In his opinion, ads fail for four distinct reasons. First, some advertisers don't set clear goals in advance. Without an achievable objective, success cannot be measured. The second reason he believes ads fail is because of a breakdown in the ad's message. The message conveyed must be relevant to the product, differentiate the product from the competition, contain at least one consumer benefit, and be believable. Another reason is that few advertisers are making use of knowledge about market segmentation and purchase concentration. Finally, he feels ads fail because too few advertisers give their ads enough exposure.

Obtaining consumer opinions through organized marketing research is essential to modern marketing. But this implies fairness to consumers, and not abuse of their confidence. The Marketing Research Code of Ethics approved by the American Marketing Association spells out minimum ethical standards for researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents his views on an attempted study of the relationship between sales income and marketing services. He notes that the study was to be based on reports from a number of member companies of the American Marketing Association. According to the author, the low rate of respondents points toward the need for developing better measurement tools for marketing at the time of publication.

The article focuses on the "Fair Packaging and Labeling Act," popularly known as the Hart Act. The effective date of the bill is presented, and queries such as what packages are covered by the act, which federal agencies will administer it, and what the act will cost are discussed. Consideration is also given to penalties for misbranded food, drugs, or cosmetics and possible conflicts with the metric system having to do with specifications of weights and measures expressed in the "Fair Packaging and Labeling Act."

Sales-analysis models have three primary dimensions: the sales unit itself, the time period covered and the geographic boundaries of the control unit. It is the third element--the geographic boundaries of the control unit--that causes difficulties. There are so many different ways to divide the United States into smaller areas for purposes of analysis. Thirteen models have been cited as an illustration. Although not all of the following 13 models are being used for sales analysis, obviously any one of them could be so used. There ought to be an optimum--size unit that could become a standard for both industry and government. Solid arguments can be advanced for separate systems, since each of them evolved in response to a different set of requirements.

The article discusses marketing spending for the 93 of the 100 largest U.S. advertisers. The author suggests the correlation between net earnings for 1961 and 1962 implies that there was nearly perfect prediction of profitability for the succeeding year, the correlation between net earnings for 1962 with the net sales of 1961 and 1962 indicates a very accurate prediction of profitability, and the correlation between 1962 net earnings and 1961 total advertising suggests a modest relationship between earnings and advertising. Findings from 1962 also indicated that investments in print advertising were more likely than television advertising to be associated with larger profits.

This study builds on past research involving the economics of advertising information (Nelson 1970, 1974) to examine the interplay between advertisers' provision and consumers' readership of information. The authors focus on the prepurchase verifiability of advertising claims in three product categories: search products, experience shopping products, and experience convenience products. They use a broader measure of the information content of advertising than in past research, together with Starch readership scores for a sample of ads from nine U.S. magazines. The results show that the relationship between information provision and readership is positive for search products, negative for convenience products, and nonsignificant for shopping products. Average information levels are significantly higher in ads for shopping products than for convenience and search products. These findings suggest that advertisers may be underinforming consumers when promoting search products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]