One approach to teaching a college-level retail advertising course emphasizes the use of newspapers and shopping guides. The course objectives are (1) to acquaint students with practices and problems of retailing, with particular emphasis on promotion and advertising; (2) to acquaint them with ways local advertising media meet promotional and…

A public once trusting of business and business values has turned skeptical and hostile, resulting in legislation designed to make business responsible for making more than a profit while delivering an increasing standard of living that poses no threats to life. Traditional institutional advertising became irrelevant as the positive public…

The oldest of the mass communication technologies, books, needs to be examined in mass communication research. Accordingly a study analyzed the structure and format of the "New York Times Book Review" to identify its dual roles: evaluating books and providing information crucial to book marketing. Also explored was how the text of the…

A study investigated the trend of current U.S. television commercial informativeness by comparing the results with Alan Resnik and Bruce Stern's previous benchmark study conducted in 1977. A systematic random sampling procedure was used to select viewing dates and times of commercials from the three national networks. Ultimately, a total of 550…

Because local television news appears to be resilient to audience erosion, programmers may find it beneficial to develop strategies that are accommodating to the interests of audience segments. This also suggests that advertisers may communicate more effectively with consumers sorted according to benefit orientation. After telephone interviews…

Social advertisers--those responsible for public and nonprofit advertising and marketing--must employ many of the major psychological motivations used by commercial advertisers to stimulate desire and action on the part of target audiences. For example, commercial advertisers create psychological stimuli to facilitate motivation of the fulfillment…

This study explored children's play behavior as it may be influenced by a particular type of television programming, i.e., shows based on commercially available toys. Subjects were two groups of 5- to 6-year-old and 7- to 8-year-old boys who were exposed to a representative program, The Transformers, which features the Transformer toys. Exposure…

A coalition of health groups wants the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) to discontinue the use of the Joe Camel cartoon character in its cigarette advertisements. RJR has denied the findings of the three studies published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" and cited by the health groups--these studies contend that…

This report describes a survey conducted by the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) in which a questionnaire was sent to 101 research libraries in order to determine what their policies and practices were with respect to the promotion of user-access to online computerized bibliographic database services. Sixty usable responses were…

The possibility that the benefits sought by radio listeners could be used to further define demographically homogeneous audiences for marketing purposes was investigated by surveying a segment of college undergraduate listeners. Twenty-five interviews were conducted to determine where, why, what time of day, and to what station an individual…

The licensing of public relations practitioners by government has long been controversial. A survey was conducted of members of the public relations division of the Association for Education in Journalism under the auspices of the division's committee on professional freedom and responsibility. One-hundred and sixty-one questionnaires were mailed…

Four hundred eight female users of cosmetics in Madison, Wisconsin, responded to questionnaires which sought to discover correlations among the goal of the purchaser and the type and source of information sought in the buying decision. Two goals were identified: rational (cost, functional benefits of product, or possible undesirable consequences…

The construct of involvement, used by marketers and consumer behaviorists for many years as a predictive measure of the qualitative relationship between an individual and a stimulus, has long been defined as having affective or cognitive roots. However, definitions that favor one or the other too heavily are less helpful because they are too…

A study tested an information processing model that incorporates the concepts of episodic and semantic memory. The model was designed to provide for the concurrent study of three advertising and communication variables: product involvement, message appeal, and distraction in viewing conditions. Among the five hypotheses being tested were that…

A study examined the changes in advertising agency personnel perceptions of media sales representatives in light of the developments in advertising and the mass media that occurred from 1950 to 1986. Data were collected from four previously conducted and published surveys, as well as a 1986 survey. The findings revealed that advertising agency…