DISTRIBUTION COSTS

Southland Times, Issue 21649, 10 March 1932, Page 4

DISTRIBUTION COSTS

METHOD OF REDUCING THEM. In an address in Glasgow’ last year, Lord Camrose declared that advertising _is a method of reducing, costs of distribution. “The force of competition,” says _ Camrose, “makes it impossible to maintain the sale of an article unless at a competitive price. As an example, take a modern product, the motor car. Who can question that advertising, by increasing demand, has reduced cost? That same principle is applicable over the whole range of industry, “May we consider for a moment the economic advantage to the public of advertised articles. The bulk of them can be proved to be cheaper, when quality is taken into consideration, than unadvertised goods competing with them. “Mr Amery, when Secretary of State for the Colonies, said that ‘under modern conditions of industry, advertising is absolutely an essential element in efficiency and cheapness of production.’ “There has been too great a tendency

on the part of merchants and manufacturers to curtail for the time being their expenditure because of a temporary falling off in demand and smaller balances of profit on trading. ‘To put your pencil through certain items and amounts in an appropriation is a comparatively simple thing, but it is no simple thing to deal afterwards with the inevitable result, which will be, although perhaps not immediately, a lessening of the demand and a fall in sales.”