Robert Merton died recently. He was an important sociologist. In the days in which advertising research, psychology, and sociology were well-joined triplets, Merton made important contributions to our field. After the radio research group moved to Columbia, Merton and Lazarsfeld did pioneering work on listening patterns, impact, and research that (perhaps unfortunately) led to our current practice. As The Economist noted in an obituary, Merton is credited with the invention of focus groups. This was not to evade quantitative research (as so often happens today) but rather to explore the personal feelings and responses to media that both preceded and followed up good quantitative research. To me, it is enlightening to see how these pioneers, including Merton, either stumbled on or brilliantly intuited many of the media and advertising research techniques we use now.

A new order of the ages for this journal? Not really, but two major changes for us begin with this issue.

As you can see, much of this issue is devoted to research among young people and students. Yes, our editorial policy is to reject research among students that purports to be applicable to the general population. But here we are. First, we thought the research in each case was interesting. Second, despite what any of the authors say, the results should not be generalized to the population. Third, we will continue to reject most student-based research.

After a few tangents in past issues, this editorial returns to the contents of just this issue. There is a lot of good stuff here. Much of the content of this issue centers on three crucial questions in advertising: not all of them are about advertising itself.

A survey of over 1,700 Hong Kong adolescents indicates that their smoking-related behaviors are related to their exposure to cigarette advertising, promotional products, and movies. American media and tobacco firms dominate these industries, resulting in strong preferences for American cigarette brands, particularly Marlboro. As a correlational study, this research does not, of itself, address the issue of causality. However, these findings do add one more dimension to a growing body of literature that cumulatively suggests a causal relationship between exposure to tobacco advertising and promotion and youth smoking.The author wishes to thank Dr. Judith Mackay, director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control, Hong Kong, and executives of the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (HKCOSH) for their help in this project.

In this article we examine factors that might impact on web advertising recall and recognition. These factors include the viewing mode, duration of page viewing, and web page context factors, including text and page background complexity and the style of the banner advertisement. Via an experimental design conducted on a student sample, we manipulate these factors over several levels. The key finding is that the longer a person is exposed to a web page containing a banner advertisement, the more likely they are to remember that banner advertisement. We also find that recognition scores are much higher than both unaided and aided recall scores. Finally, web users in a goal-directed mode are much less likely to recall and recognize banner advertisements than users who are surfing a site.

The practice of product (or brand) placement has grown significantly during the past 20 years; marketers now frequently use placements as the basis for multimillion dollar integrated promotional campaigns. A survey of the members of the Entertainment Resources and Marketing Association, the leading placement-industry group, was conducted to assess practitioners' beliefs. Items mirrored those used in a 1994 survey of the same group. Practitioners today believe an expanded set of brand and executional factors are important for the placement to be effective. Today's practitioners are also more likely to believe that placement leads to trade-offs between financial and creative considerations in film production.

Many marketing scholars and practitioners would agree that the ideal relationship between a client and its advertising agency is that of a strategic partnership. Yet, one element of the strategic marketing planning process—the setting of the advertising budget—still remains relatively uninfluenced by agency input. In this article, we discuss why agencies traditionally have had little input into the budget-setting process. We draw upon qualitative interviews with top marketing managers to provide insight into the agency/client relationship and identify seven factors likely to influence the extent of agency participation in budget setting. Ways in which clients and agencies can work together to increase agency participation are also discussed.The authors acknowledge the support of the Florida International University Foundation in the completion of this project.

The relationship between advertising agencies and their clients has been the subject of some research, including studies conceptualizing it from an agency theory perspective. The increasingly important relationship between sports (or art) properties and their sponsors, on the other hand, while recognized as crucial for the long-term success of the sponsorship agreement, has remained shrouded in mystery, with little or no research aiming to establish and understand the antecedent of sponsorship renewal. This article reports on an exploratory dyadic study examining the effects of market orientation, trust, and commitment on the principal's willingness to renew the sponsorship relationship. The leading sponsorship property in Australia, the Australian Football League (AFL), and its major sponsors provided the empirical context for this study.

Although the use of shocking content in advertising appeals has been widely adopted, the effectiveness of such communication strategies has not been empirically investigated. In two laboratory studies, conducted in the context of HIV/AIDS prevention, we examine the effectiveness of shock advertising in comparison to the commonly used appeals of fear and information. Our findings suggest that shocking content in an advertisement significantly increases attention, benefits memory, and positively influences behavior among a group of university students.

The author (Marvin Goldberg) cites 23 studies with diverse methodologies that he describes as showing a causal connection between advertising or promotional efforts for tobacco and the smoking behavior of young people.

Despite the longstanding regulatory debate over outdoor advertising, only a limited number of academic studies have explored why firms use the medium. To give insight on several issues pertaining to the outdoor advertising controversy, this article presents findings from a national survey of billboard users and nonusers. Users believe that billboards have unique advantages that are not offered by other media. Thus, they have more positive views than nonusers of billboards' ability to communicate information at an affordable cost, attract new customers, and reach a targeted local area. Users also believe that billboards serve a different function than on-premise signs, and that other media are poor substitutes for billboards. Unlike nonusers, a majority of billboard users indicate that their company would lose sales if billboards were banned. Small businesses, travel-related businesses, and heavier users of billboards predict a sales decline of approximately 20 percent on average.

In verbal, one-way marketing communication, e.g., radio advertising, the only cues that the target customer has are voice related. Competitive and financial considerations dictate that advertisers use the most cost-effective means to accomplish their communication objectives. Using a two-step approach, this study examines, first, the effect of speech rate on young adult listener responses to verbal advertising. The second phase of the study seeks to identify significant differences when different methods of speech sampling (time- or pause compressed/expanded) are used to produce the faster/slower speech rates. Results indicate that faster speech rates affect the number of affective responses and the attitude toward the message while slower speech rates elicit more cognitive processing by young adult listeners. The use of pause only expansion to produce the slow speech rate accentuates the level of cognitive processing and attitude toward the message. Recognition of these effects allows the advertising strategist to further refine targeted message delivery.

This article describes the results of a series of tests to determine the effects of a variety of techniques on response rates to mail surveys.

Advertisers who perceived high similarity between themselves and those within their advertising agency rated their agency as superior to those who felt they had less in common with agency contacts. Outcome measures examined included communication, performance, intention to remain with the agency, and defection following the departure of agency personnel. Differences based on the organizational level of the respondent emerged. Lifestyle factors of similarity were found to play an important role in perceived agency performance, lending support for deeper exploration of client traits and personality prior to the agency's assignment of personnel to a client account.The authors would like to thank Anthony King for his help with background research for this article.

In recent years, some consumer products' firms have made attempts to replace or sharply reduce the use of sales promotion, including coupons and sales, with everyday low prices (EDLP). While consumers can benefit from EDLP initiatives, the strong negative reactions from many consumers suggest they do not necessarily favor the reduction of sales promotion activities. Their negative response raises concern that consumers who are very highly involved with sales promotion have strong underlying reasons for their resistance. This article attempts to develop a broader understanding of the differences between those consumers highly coupon and sale prone and those less prone to sales promotion across a variety of economic and shopping-related dimensions. Results from three studies reveal that highly prone consumers are drawn to reduced prices, but they also enjoy shopping and gain a sense of achievement by purchasing products on special. Implications of findings are discussed.

Automobile industry promotional incentives to consumers have been used for 25 years, yet little empirical research exists in this specific area. This large-scale, national study investigates the influence of monthly payment incentives (rebates and low interest rates) on the decision process of both car and truck owners and lessees. Results are discussed in terms of both managerial applications and implications for future research.

This article examines the contribution of direct mail advertising to average weekly unit sales of a national fast food franchisee. Two different types of direct mail advertising are used, both independently and in conjunction with local and national advertising. Results of a field study indicate that one type of direct mail (a shopper) contributes significantly to sales when used independently. When combined with national or local advertising, however, the contribution level of this shopper decreases. Conversely, a direct mail insert combined with many others inserts into one single envelope is much more powerful when utilized in conjunction with national advertising. In fact, results show that this latter combination of direct mail with national advertising contributes more to average weekly unit sales than any other combination. Implications are offered and future research is suggested.

The ecological fallacy, the drawing of inferences about individuals based on aggregate level data, was discovered over 50 years ago but is still present in a surprising number of commonly employed marketing and advertising research tools. In this article, we examine three specific manifestations of the ecological fallacy—gap/grid analysis, leverage analysis, and the misuse of indexes from syndicated research. Our analysis will demonstrate that the approaches represent parallel paths to an analysis procedure that results in correct conclusions only by accident.We acknowledge Kathryn Britney for contributions to an earlier draft of this article.

Since the advent of the internet, much speculation has ensued regarding its tangible benefits to business. This article looks at the effectiveness of email advertising to promote information to consumers. Within this email promotion context, and using data from a survey of 838 female Finnish consumers of a major international cosmetics brand, we investigate consumer perceptions of email advertising. Specifically, within an exploratory research context we address two research questions: (1) What email advertising factors may influence visits to the company website? and (2) What email advertising factors may influence visits to a physical (i.e., bricks-and-mortar) company sales outlet? Results suggest that email advertisers should strive to generate emails that are perceived as useful. Useful emails appear to influence consumers to visit the store primarily to either buy the product or view the product firsthand, rather than visit the company website. However, as consumers could not buy the advertised products from the website, these findings should be regarded as preliminary. Factors influencing perceptions of email advertising usefulness are explored along with limitations and future research directions.