ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF ADVERTISING: ASSESSING DATA INTERVAL BIAS (1984, 1-5)
Kent M. Lancaster, Spencer F. Tinkham, and James E. Haefner

Econometric research concerning data interval bias has been especially critical of annual data, suggesting that it tends to overstate the long-term effects of advertising. This paper, which employs both cross-sectional and time-series data, demonstrates how researchers can determine for themselves the direction of any bias due to data interval.

This paper estimates the impact of advertising on the structure, conduct and performance of the toothpaste industry. Time series data on the industry were analyzed using log linear regression techniques to determine if advertisingÍs role in the industry is largely one of market information or market power. The results of the analysis challenge a portion of the advertising equals market power developed by Kaldo, Bain, Comanor and Wilson, and a portion of SteinerÍs four stages of advertising effects theory. However, drawing on SteinerÍs work, the importance of recognizing the role of the distribution sector in assessing the actual impact of advertising is emphasized.

This paper is based on an analysis of long term trends in advertising expenditures by the hundred leading advertisers, which are published every year by ñAdvertising Ageî; and it examines in particular the trends of advertising measured as a share of the sales value of packaged goods manufacturers. The paper details a number of significant declining trends which first set in during the mid 1960Ís. It then examines the likely reasons and discusses the interaction of four pressures leading to declines in advertising and four pressures leading to increases: and how these pressures operated at various times during the period 1961-1982. The paper draws the conclusion that a strong economic revival in the 1980Ís could halt the downward progression (and there is some evidence of this already); but in the authorÍs opinion, the ratings will never again reach the levels which operated in the early 1960Ís. In the absence of a continued economic revival, the downward trends could continue indefinitely.

This investigation examined the purchasing decision making structure of Mexican-American and Anglo families. The results indicate that Mexican-American families tend to be husband dominant in terms of their purchasing behavior, while Anglo families appear to engage in more joint decision making. These findings have obvious and strong implications for marketers and advertisers wishing to optimize their performance in an increasingly heterogeneous and bilingual marketplace.

Both professional wisdom and the research on advertising readership suggest the importance of headlines in shaping if and how advertising visuals are perceived. By considering varying degrees of literal-figurative complexity in both the visual and verbal content, four common technical types of print ads are described: display, double-entendre, metaphor and puzzle. Characteristics of each of these are discussed as is coherence between visual and verbal elements.

A content analysis investigates the prevalence and traits of trade characters in advertising to children and examines those content aspects of trade character commercials which may determine their effectiveness in product promotion. Content dimensions are drawn from associational learning, persuasion, and social learning theoretical perspectives. Results are discussed in terms of practical implications and directions for future research.

Narrative or story commercials, the second most common commercial format, are examined in order to understand their function and structure. The concept of narrative is discussed as a primary mode of consciousness that is ingrained from our earliest years as part of a virtually universal cultural heritage. Narrative commercials, the paper argues, share with other narrative forms a structure that embeds the product of service for convenient information processing, storage, and accessible retrieval. A narrative commercial photomatic is analyzed to demonstrate the narrative paradigm.

A review of the conceptualization of emotion in advertising research and psychology is presented. The need to recognize the complexity of emotion, to develop a theoretical understanding of how emotion interacts with other variables relevant to consumer response to advertising, and to begin to develop valid and reliable methods to measure differences in emotional response to advertising is asserted. The paper also presents preliminary development of a coding scheme for analysis of affective verbal responses and reports preliminary results of a pilot test.

Most research on the advertising of professional services has focused on ñprofessional service marketing.î Scant attention has been paid to the arguments favoring (or, by the professional organizations, fearing) the freedom for ñlearned professionsî to advertise. This paper presents discussions of the fears and hopes of what impact this advertising might have on the professional practices and society and a review of some of the studies in the area, mostly surveys of consumers and professionals. For advertising research to go beyond its current predominant ñhow to marketî perspective, the need is to first try and understand the views on various sides of the issue.

This paper explores the players, strategies and circumstances involved in the early efforts to promote the advertising uses of network-radio broadcasting. It argues that competition between NBC and CBS introduced a new, ñscientificî style into broadcastersÍ solicitations of the advertising community. The success of scientific promotion functioned to expand the influence of advertisers and agencies in broadcasting, to widen the opportunities available to media researchers, and to advance the standing of broadcasting within the media industry as a whole.

Metric Multidimensional scaling is a controversial and not often used measurement technique in advertising. This experimental study explores this techniqueÍs value in measuring short term advertising effects with respect to exposure weight and timing. The study has shown that even with cell sizes as small as twenty, metric multidimensional scaling proves sensitive enough to discriminate advertising effects which traditional recall or persuasion measures do not distinguish. This method, however, as shown in this study, has a limitation in that extreme responses skew cell distributions to the extent that it is hard to measure significance. Remedies are suggested.

Descriptive accounts of decision processes in advertising organizations are scarce, although seriously needed to supplement normative accounts in advertising texts and published one-shot surveys. This paper introduces decision systems analysis (DSA) as a research procedure for developing data-based descriptions of intra- and inter-decision processes of advertising organizations. A brief overview of the major advertising organizations is provided, with examples of organizational topics for DSA research. Subsequent sections outline the research procedure of DSA and discuss how the procedure can be used as a diagnostic and knowledge building tool.

This paper is a content analysis of four publications covering a ten year period, 1973-1982. The focus of the analysis is the trend in the publishing of empirically versus non-empirically based manuscripts. The findings suggest increased competition for a decreasing amount of space for the non-empirical papers.

This study utilizes a sample survey of advertising professors to determine the frequency and types of activities offered to give students ñhands-onî experience in advertising. Questions focused on three areas: contest participation, creating campaigns for actual businesses and other activities (e.g., internships). Experiential activities were offered formally or informally by 95% of schools sampled, and all three types were offered by a majority of the schools, with campaigns for actual businesses the most popular.

Many students approach the introductory advertising course with a priori knowledge of the subject matter. This paper argues that a priori student knowledge should be assessed before formal instruction. The benefits of this procedure include an improved learning experience for the student, an empirical measure of changes in learning and a more effective teaching experience for the educator. Implementation considerations for this procedure are presented and the results of a classroom experiment which incorporates the procedure are reviewed.

This paper attempts to foster a discussion among advertising educators, aimed at reevaluating the status of sales promotion in marketing and advertising education. The paper begins with a brief overview of the place given sales promotions in current textbooks. Next, an attempt is made to develop a taxonomy of sales promotion activities focusing on their nature and strategic goals. Several examples of sales promotion are cited and explained. The paper then develops several hypotheses on the nature of the relationships between advertising and sales promotion. Suggestions for future teaching and research conclude the article.

Because of the concerns over the so-called ñeffective frequency theoryî - that it is necessary for repeated exposure before any significant communication takes place, we investigated the extent of potentially underexposed television audiences. Using special A.C. Nielsen data on network television, it was determined that significant proportions of daypart audiences receive only minimal exposure (opportunities to see) to typical GRP level scheduling. The low OTS condition appears inherent in television schedules for all but the largest budgets.

Within-vehicle television duplication is an important information quantity used in media decision making. As these duplication data are generally not provided by the syndicated measurement services they must be estimated. This paper examines the effectiveness of three methods of estimating within-vehicle television duplication. One estimation method, the use of the ñDî ratio in Goodhardt and EhrenbergÍs Duplication Formula, is empirically tested using 1979 SMRB television data. The D ratio was found to accurately estimate within-vehicle television duplication for a sample of television shows.

The limitations of demographically-based intermedia comparison techniques are discussed, as well as the need for more quantitative analytic tools. The VALS typology is suggested as an alternative solution to the dilemma, and when analyzed in a broadcast context is found to differentiate among vehicles compared. The results suggest meaningful directions for media planners in extending the application of this analytic technique to include broadcast media planning as well.

This study examined the literature on the selective exposure hypothesis and concluded that previous reviews erroneously applied one definition to different selective-avoidance behaviors. This review suggests that selective exposure studies can be classified as studies of decision consistency, attitude consistency, and behavior consistency. Research on selective exposure has demonstrated support for a theory of attitude consistent selectivity, but not decision or behavior consistent selectivity.

This is a summarizing and synthesizing of the cases in the recent era at the Federal Trade Commission that have involved findings of deception through the misuse of surveys cited in ads as support for product claims. The FTCÍs case records are open to the public, but it makes no such overview available.

This research examined the effects of headlines and illustration puffery on the readership scores of 595 one-and-two page AD-CHART studied industrial advertisements. The advertisements were coded for puffery and non-puffery using a definition from Preston, which has been operationalized in other research studies. Using ñNoticed,î ñRead half or moreî and ñInformativenessî scores as dependent variables, this study found that the use of headline and illustration puffery had no significant effects on the response measures.

Commercial speech was first afforded First Amendment protection in the Virginia Pharmacy case of 1976. In the Central Hudson case of 1980, a more complete framework was establish