RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Concave or S-Shaped Sales Response to Advertising: Does It Really Matter?
JF Journal of Advertising Research
JO J Advert Res
FD WARC
SP 388
OP 392
DO 10.2501/JAR-54-4-388-392
VO 54
IS 4
A1 Paul D. Berger
A1 Bruce D. Weinberg
YR 2014
UL http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/54/4/388.abstract
AB In many advertising situations, the optimal decision—how much to spend and where to allocate the advertising budget—is not sensitive to the exact functional form used in modeling the process under study. For decades, however, researchers have taken for granted the conventional theory that the major distinction is whether the “shape” of sales, as a function of advertising, is concave—increasing, with diminishing returns—or S-shaped—convex to begin with, and after an inflection point, concave from then on. In fact, as the current study showed, the distinction between concave and S-shaped sales-response functions can be irrelevant. The optimal advertising decision may not vary depending on the type of function.