Advertising budgets, advertising effectiveness, and the Navy's recruiting advertising program

摘要

A selective review of the literature on advertising effectiveness revealed no generalizable results for setting advertising budget decisions. The primaryproblem is a lack of knowledge as to how advertising, as input, affects an output,such as sales. All Navy advertising expenditures for 1976 and 1977 were allocated to counties by month for 1976 and 1977 and supplemented with recruitingand environmental data to examine the relationship between advertising and enlistments. Total advertising expenditures were moderately related to total enlistments (R = .442), but this relationship was found to be the result of management planning and allocation of resources and goals. When advertisingand enlistments were made rate variables, there was no linear relationshipbecause the rate of advertising increased rapidly without a correspondingincrease in enlistment rates. A fourth root transformation of advertisingrates permitted application of a linear regression model where advertising wasfound to be the most significant predictor of enlistment rates. Recommendationsare made for further studies and actions to evaluate and increase advertisingeffectiveness.