Abstract:

The title of this talk is "can a correlation of advertising to sales be demonstrated?" It will have some resemblance to the Edward Albee play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf". That is, the title poses a question which the author has no intention of answering. Nevertheless, I suppose we wouldn't be assembled here today if most of us didn't believe that advertising is one of the most important influences in the sale of consumer products. But despite this conviction, market researchers have always been rather pessimistic about the possibility of demonstrating any continuous effect of advertising on sales, because of the complexity of the marketing mix.