PUBLIC OPINION

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 226, 22 April 1933, Page 8

PUBLIC OPINION

MARKETING OUR PRODUCE (To the Editor) S i r _Your leading article of tonight touching on the above vital point, prompts me, as an Englishman, to enlarge on a few aspects of the marketing question, for it is undoubted that development at the "selling end," and there only, will hasten a return to better times. It may be accepted that we have only one market, and the efforts to exploit alternative outlets would, if successful, only divert to England the ousted produce of competitors. You mention the expense of existing management of dairying affairs in this country. What huge manufacturing concern can thrive —even exist —against competition, with merely expensive internal management and no sales-minded marketing organisation?

New Zealand can be compared to a large-scale butter factory, with thousands of employees, a colossal investment, a sympathetic market, but with costly management minus an active sales department. We have only to realise, for example, that many thousands of expensive luxury lines would never leave the warehouses were it not for the demand created and sustained by aggressive sales executives.

How must the men who have at various times successfully and profitably launched country-wide campaigns for the marketing of such things as electric cleaners, sigh for an opportunity to be appointed a director of sales for New Zealand produce, over a territory embracing just a few English counties with, however a population of millions of butter eaters, and a grocer's shop on nearly every street corner. The "cockie" may be reproached for a certain apathy regarding marketing, but from conversations I have had with dozens of farmers, it is clear that the average man on the land now realises the urgent necessity for the application of modern marketing methods. If leaders of the industry would study and publicly emphasise the need for stimulating the demand for our produce it would be of more lasting service to the country than the cutting of dairy employees wages. Let me answer the question "Why should British housewives buy New Zealand butter?" with a parallel.. "Why do New Zealand housewives buy a certain brand of baking powder?" . . . Simply that consistent publicity and efficient marketing of a good product, which when similarly applied, will make butterfat prices rise.—l am, etc.,

H. C. B. SCOTT. Stratford, 21/4/33.