We are accustomed to think of a newspaper as a medium of advertising. We sometimes forget that a daily newspaper is a commodity in itself and as one of the most perishable of consumer goods it presents some very special problems. It is manufactured during the night and is on sale for a part of the following day. After this time it is of very little value to the consumer. Like most products it has regular and occasional buyers. It is distributed nationally though 1 ,200 wholesalers and 40,000 retailers, and is promoted and advertised in much the same way as other goods. Demand is seasonal, with sudden bursts whenever major news events occur. Decisions on volume of production and distribution have to be taken every night. A newspaper with an expansionist policy must of course provide opportunities for chance purchasers and must incur the costs of over production. Even with a static circulation policy the fluctuation in demand for the newspaper would lead to the imperfect matching of supply and demand.
The questions posed by delegates , both in the working groups and in the final session on Saturday morning, fell into five main groups: these are summarised below, with the answers given by the authors.
In the present state of the art of econometrics, it is not possible to quantify or validate the relationships sketched at the macro level. Data on certain of the other relationships point in certain directions and so we have some knowledge of how one variable affects another if at times we cannot be very precise about the strength of the effect. In other cases where we have little or no data, we have subjective ideas: if the model reacts particularly sensitively to a hypothesised relationship, we have to feed in different values for the variable in question and take a view about which is most likely. Our present forecasting method is based on the past relationships between rises in consumer expenditure, expenditure on foreign travel and number of inclusive tours. Naturally we monitor continually to refine and if necessary adjust this technique.