Advertising for Grocery

The following appeared as part of a promotional campaign to sell advertising space in the Daily Gazette to grocery stores in the Marston area:

"Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily Gazette will help you increase your sales. Consider the results of a study conducted last month. Thirty sale items from a store in downtown Marston were advertised in The Gazette for four days. Each time one or more of the 30 items was purchased, clerks asked whether the shopper had read the ad. Two-thirds of the 200 shoppers asked answered in the affirmative. Furthermore, more than half the customers who answered in the affirmative spent over $100 at the store."

Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.

The data presented firmly establishes that advertising with the Daily Gazette really helped some downtown stores. However it is not clear what kind of periodical Daily Gazette is - in the sense what is its focus subject. Is it a tabloid publication that just focuses on life of film-stars and scandals? Is it a financial daily covering essential financial changes? Is is just a generic daily with no particular focus on any area? If it is, say, a high-priced tabloid or a financial publication, it will make little sense for grocery stores to advertise with it. On the other hand if Daily Gazette is a cheap, generic publication; the reasoning above would appear very strong.

Further it is not clear if the goods sold by the benefited stores were of similar nature. If mentioned it would have given more confidence to the user that indeed the audience of the gazette would have interest in groceries as well.

Concluding, advertising cannot be random if it has to be successful. It should be carefully built around the targeted segment of customers so as it sends across a coherent, well-thought message. On top of that it should be disseminated using the right medium, at the right place and at the right time. The reasoning above keeps some of this in mind and presents an argument that is fairly strong but not beyond doubt. Some detail about the stores and the gazette content can make it pretty strong or make it completely irrelevant.