An Evaluation of Joint and Service-Specific Advertising Efficiency for Military Recruitment
Abstract
This report examines whether advertising money is more efficiently allocated to Joint advertising or to Service-specific advertising (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines). This is done using data gathered in 1984 under the Department of Defense sponsored 'Advertising Mix Test' wherein a designed experiment varied the levels of joint and service-specific advertising across the U.S. and observed the number of recruits obtained. Previous studies have not considered the efficiency with which different entities conduct recruiting activities, and it is possible that a good program can be inefficiently run, or an inferior program can be efficiently run, thus leading to incorrect conclusions if efficiency is ignored. Here we show that in the test data design, the joint advertising' cells had 5-15 times as many efficient recruiting entities as had the 'service specific advertising' cells, and that ignoring this efficiency difference leads to the conclusion that joint advertising is more efficient that service specific advertising. After removing managerial inefficiencies in each program, however, we arrive at exactly namely that when efficiently managed service specific advertising is more efficient that is efficiently managed joint advertising.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 15, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA399739
Entities
People
- Mark J. Davis
- Michael J. Kwinn
- Michael L. Mcginnis
Organizations
- United States Military Academy