integrates both consumer and competitive response. We test this framework using data on 118
brands in 24 categories in which P&G competed over a seven-year period.
7.1 Summary of Findings
Our first research question relates to how advertising and promotion work in attracting and
retaining customers. We find the following:
• Deals and coupons increase penetration and have a zero or somewhat positive impact on
customer retention as measured by SOR and USE.
• Advertising appears to work primarily by increasing penetration but the effect is weaker than
that of promotion. We find little evidence that advertising increases SOR or USE among the
average brand’s existing users.
• Promotion has a stronger direct impact on share than advertising for the average packaged
goods brand. This is a common finding in both micro and macro short-term studies (e.g.,
Tellis 1988; Boulding, Lee, and Staelin 1994), that has not been demonstrated previously in
the case of a major and sustained policy change.
Our second research question concerns the relative roles of market share response, structural
factors, and firm-specific effects in determining competitor response. We find:
• Competitors' reactions to a sustained change in advertising and promotion policy by a market
leader vary with the degree to which their market share is affected. Reactions also vary by
structural factors such as the market share position of the competitor and the number of
markets in which it competes with the initiator of the policy change.
• Even after accounting for market share response elasticities and structural factors, there are
still firm-specific effects in competitor reactions.
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• Competitors do not react the same way on all marketing instruments. In this case,
competitors tended to decrease advertising and coupons but used deals to gain market share
even when they were benefiting from P&G's policy change.
Our third question is how consumer and competitor response combine to determine overall
market share impact. We find that the net impact is a decrease in market share for the initiating
company, although it is plausible that its profits increased. The loss in penetration resulting from
promotion cuts is not offset by increases in SOR or by competitive reactions. The effect of
promotion on share is greater than that of advertising for established brands, though the reverse
is true for small brands. The implication is that cuts in promotion, even if coupled with increases
in advertising, will not grow market share for the average established brand in mature consumer
goods categories.
7.2 Limitations and Further Research
While these findings are both important and stimulating, our study does have some limitations.
First, we focus on a policy change that involves significant changes in advertising and
promotion. We do not have data on any changes P&G may have made in variables such as
product assortment or new product development, so we cannot speak to their impact. Similarly,
data limitations preclude the use of moderators such as sales force, distribution, and ad copy in
our consumer response model (see Gatignon 1993). While our purpose is not to study these
moderators per se, including them might have generated additional insights. Nor do we have
measures of firm-specific factors such as culture and management skill, although the statistical
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significance of the dummy variable surrogates we use for these factors should encourage future
research in this area.
Second, we cannot make conclusive statements about the impact of the strategy change on
profitability in the absence of data on P&G's manufacturer price and cost data. This would be an
important area for future research if relevant data become available. Still, sales are a key
objective for most companies including P&G (see Kristofferson and Lal 1996 a, b; Brooker
1999; Fairclough 1999), so we believe our analysis of market share is important.
Third, as noted earlier, our analysis pertains to sales made through the US grocery channel, and
alternative channels such as mass and discount merchandisers have become more important in
recent years. We note, however, that the shift to alternative channels is occurring for other large
competitors as well.
Fourth, we assume that P&G’s adoption and consistent application of Value Pricing is
exogenous, i.e., P&G did not react to competition. With only seven time series data points, we
cannot investigate this issue. Trends in P&G’s marketing mix over the seven-year period,
however, do not reveal any major pattern shifts or reversals. If a reversal in strategy does occur
in the future, it would provide another valuable opportunity to examine market response.
Finally, our analysis is based on aggregate data. There is a trade-off between the micro approach
to examining individual brands, categories, or markets, and the broad-based, strategic view
provided by our analysis and others like it. We believe both approaches contribute to
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understanding market response and should be viewed as complementing one another.
Importantly, many of our results are consistent with micro studies, and the product categories in
which we are able to replicate our analysis with disaggregate quarterly data also corroborate our
findings. Still, it would be valuable to examine differences between our conclusions and those
based on more disaggregate data, should those data be available. Such data would also enable
researchers to study brand and category differences in market response in more detail and to
study interactions between marketing mix variables, e.g., the effect of a brand's advertising and
promotion on its price elasticity (e.g., Gatignon 1993; Jedidi, Mela, and Gupta 1999).
7.3 Implications for Researchers and Managers
While acknowledging these limitations, we believe our results are provocative and raise several
important questions and implications for researchers and managers:
• What is the correspondence between share of requirements and brand loyalty? A sustained
decrease in promotion and increase in advertising should have enhanced P&G's SOR through
increased brand loyalty. However, advertising did not improve SOR. Further, the net impact
of cutting deals and coupons, and the concomitant increase in net price paid, was to decrease
SOR. We believe this is due to the “retention” role of price promotions – in a competitive
environment, an existing user is more likely to re-purchase the brand when it is on promotion
than when it is not. But, even if promotions do not hurt SOR, underlying attitudinal loyalty
could be diminishing. It is important for researchers to investigate this further (e.g., Kopalle,
Mela, and Marsh 1999), since SOR is a commonly used indicator of brand loyalty (e.g.,
Bhattacharya et al. 1996; Bhattacharya 1997).
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• What does advertising do? We find that the direct effect of advertising on the components of
market share is weak for all but small brands. This lack of effectiveness could be attributable
to execution (e.g., Lodish et al. 1995a) or to the way advertising works for established brands
in mature markets. It is important to have a base level of advertising, but even substantial
increases over that base level may not generate dramatic gains in market share for established
brands. Our results are consistent with Tellis (1988), Deighton, Henderson, and Neslin
(1994), and Batra et al. (1995) even though we were working with a substantial increase in
advertising. In any event, more research is needed on how and in what circumstances
advertising works.
• Market share elasticities, structural, and firm-specific factors play a role in competitor
response. Managers who try to anticipate competitor response must not only know how their
policy change will affect competitors' market share, but also consider structural issues such
as the market share position of their competitors and in how many markets they compete.
Further, competitor-specific resources, capabilities, and culture also determine the response.
Our findings strongly suggest the need for theory that can predict not only the factors that
determine competitive response but also the direction of their influence.
• Competitors' response to policy changes is not uniform across marketing instruments. The
reasons for this need to be sorted out. An obvious potential explanation would be differences
in profitability across marketing instruments, but there may also be some organizational
factors at work. For example, it may be easier for managers to reallocate their total marketing
budgets than to change them drastically.
• Researchers should make use of major policy changes. Dekimpe and Hanssens (1995) note
that most markets are stationary which precludes the finding of persistent effects of