The Advertising Exposure Effect of Free Standing Inserts

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Abstract
Manufacturers of consumer packaged goods regularly distribute coupons through free standing inserts in newspapers. In this paper, we investigate the possibility that free standing inserts have an advertising exposure effect that influences the brand purchases of shoppers who do not use coupons in the category studied. If free standing inserts for a brand do have a pure advertising exposure effect, there should be an increase in the sales of that brand even to non-users of the coupons. Results of an empirical analysis show that such an effect does exist for two of the six cases investigated. We also find some evidence of a cross-brand advertising exposure effect indicating that the sales of a competing brand to non-users of coupons decrease in the weeks following the appearance of a coupon in a free standing insert.