THE OBJECTIVES OF ADVERTISING
The long-term objective of advertising, as of every other business activity, is to increase the firm's net profits over
what they would be without it. In some cases, increased profits are also immediate objectives; but in others, they are not.
Perhaps the most important short-term objective of advertising is to provide support for personal selling and other
methods of promotion. Advertising is almost never used alone; generally it is cast in a supporting role to other means of
promotion.
However, advertising is an extremely versatile communications tool. Depending upon the marketing situation,
companies use advertising to achieve various marketing objectives:
1. To do the entire selling job (as in mail-order marketing)
2. To introduce a new product (by building brand awareness among potential buyers)
3. To force middlemen to handle the product (pull strategy)
4. To build brand preference (by making it more difficult for middlemen to sell substitutes)
5. To remind users to buy the product (retentive strategy)
6. To publicize some change in marketing strategy (e.g., a price change, a new model, or an improvement in the
product)
7. To provide rationalizations for buying (i.e.,"socially acceptable" excuses)
8. To combat or neutralize competitors; advertising efforts
9. To improve the morale of dealers and/or salesmen
10. To acquaint buyers and prospective buyers with new uses of the product.
The above list is not all-inclusive but only illustrative of the broad range of objectives advertising may be directed
toward accomplishing. One danger in presenting such a list is that the reader may get the idea that advertising is only
something that the advertiser does to someone else. However, for companies operating under the marketing concept, it
is important to bear in mind that advertising should also serve as an effective and efficient source of information for
members of the audience. Following the logic of the marketing concept, an information source can only maximally serve
the advertiser's purposes when it serves the target audience's purposes. Advertising objectives, in other words,
although they may be phrased in terms of what the marketer would like to accomplish, should be appraised from the
standpoint of their effectiveness in providing needed and relevant information to members of the intended audience.
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