THE RATIONALE OF ADVERTISING.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 106, 15 April 1876, Page 3

THE RATIONALE OF ADVERTISING.

Advertising is an expedient for obtaining business by no means generally practised. Many tradesmen are deterred by the expense; some have no faith in its efficacy ; others think it a mark of second-rate status in business, and therefore more apt to be injurious than otherwise. On the other hand, some tradesmen make a system of advertising, planting every kind of periodical, from the daily newspaper to the quarterly review, with specifications of their anxiety to serve the public, and oi the merits of the articles in which f they deal, and evidently spending a considerable sum of money yearly in this way. The unconcerned reader and the less acute tradesman, struck by the frequency of these appeals for business, are apt to suppose that he who makes them must be less under the influence of wisdom than of folly, and a good deal of a pretender or a quack into the bargain. There may even be a class who make a principle of disbelieving and disregarding all such appeals, and, like the Irishman, when much entreated to come, the more they won’t come. Yet the regular discharge of advertisements keeps up nevertheless, and the trader must evidently find it serviceable upon the whole. It may be worth while to communicate to young tradesmen the ideas of an old one on this subject. They are simply, and briefly as follows:—The first utility of frequent and regular advertising consists in this: there is at all times a large class of persons, both in country and town, who have no fixed place for the purchase of certain necessary articles, and are ready to be swayed and drawn towards any particular place which is earnestly brought under their notice. Indifferent to all ihey yield without hesitation to the first who asks. Then, in the country, a considerable number of persons who wish a supply of the article advertised, and do not know of any particular place where it is to be got, being thus furnished with the address of a person who can supply them, naturally open a communication with that address which pei’haps leads to much ulterior business. People in the country are also liable to be favourably impressed by a frequent sight of a name in the

newspapers. The advertising party acquires distinction in their eyes, and thus they are led, in making a choice, to prefer him.

But by far the most important effect of advertising is one of an indirect nature. It conveys the impression that the party —pretending or not pretending, quackish or not quackish—is anxious for business. One who is anxious for business is unavoidably supposed to be an industrious, attentive, civil person, who keeps the best of articles, at the cheapest rate, does everything, in the neatest and most tradesmanlike manner, and in general uses every expedient to gratify and attach customers. People like to purchase under those circumstances, and the system of advertising assuring them that such circumstances exist at this particular shop, they select it accordingly. Such arc the opinions of the old tradesman alluded to, and they are certainly supported by fact; for wherever an extensive and regular system of advertising is practised, and no back drawing or unconquerable circumstances exist, it is usually seen to be attended with a considerable share of success. One feature in the philosophy of the subject must be carefully attended to. A faint and infrequent system of advertising does not. succeed not even in proportion. “ Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.”—Chambers Journal.