Chapter Summaries - Chapter 19

Like distribution, promotion and particularly
mass-media advertising, is often
regarded as a cost-creating function which
adds little or nothing to the value of the
product. In this chapter we have sought to
dispel this misconception by showing
that not only is advertising the most costeffective
means of informing potential consumers
about the existence of a product
and generating interest in it, but it also
adds value by enhancing the subjective
merits of the product or service.

To this end we have reviewed the nature
of the communication process and examined
alternative explanations of the way in which
advertising is claimed to work. While
research indicated a low correlation between
attitudes and behaviour (which are central to
the traditional hierarchical models of advertising
effect) it was suggested that this may
be due to the fact that much of the reported
research has been concerned with what
Krugman (1965) termed ‘low-involvement
goods’. Accordingly, our own preference was
to accept the model proposed by Joyce in
1967, which recognises that while advertising
may ‘work’ in a number of different ways,
attitudes play an important role and are susceptible
to influence through advertising.

Following a discussion of how individuals
use selective perception, attention and
retention to survive in an overcommunicated
society, considerable attention was given to
the selection of promotion objectives as an
essential precursor to setting the advertising
budget. Five basic approaches to the latter
problem were proposed and complemented
by a summary of methods for estimating how
effective such expenditure had been.