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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!tektronix!orca!andrew
From: andrew@orca.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: Byte reader service cards
Message-ID: <606@orca.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 19-Feb-84 15:51:05 EST
Article-I.D.: orca.606
Posted: Sun Feb 19 15:51:05 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Feb-84 03:40:35 EST
References: <16666@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 42

Will Martin flames:

	"ALL advertisers in a magazine with a Reader-Service card
	provded should be COMPELLED to use the Reader-Service numbers."

You might as well say that private fashion salons should be compelled
to hold showings for anyone that walks in off the street, just in case
one of them should develop an interest in buying designer clothing.

Despite bombast to the contrary, there are a good many advertisers who
don't want to deal with readers who are not sufficiently interested to
fill out a postcard.  One of the winning points of our system of free
enterprise is that a vendor can target a specific consumer audience.
Some vendors like to flood consumers with advertising in hopes that one
in a thousand will buy the product.  Others feel that their products
are such that interested consumers will find them without such a flood.

The primary reason that magazines such as BYTE institute reader service
cards (known in the trade as "Bingo" cards) is so that they can count
the number of "responses" and use those statistics to sell more ads.

A case history might be useful here.  I ran a software mail order house
for three years.  We started out requesting and servicing bingo
numbers, and we kept statistics on them and on readers who used
postcards or telephone calls to request information.  It cost us a
dollar to respond to each Bingo, and our product cost about $200.
After three months we noticed that 0.3% of the Bingos had placed
orders.  That is, we spent $300 for each $200 sale.  By contrast, about
a quarter of the postcard mailers followed up with orders.

Needless to say, we stopped requesting Bingos.  To put it in terms that
consumerists can understand, if we were forced to continue losing $100
on each Bingo-inspired sale, we would have gone out of business very
quickly and the choice of products available to consumers would have
decreased.

In the long run, though, we did go out of business.  When a half-page
ad in Microsystems cost $200, we could make money.  When it shot up to
$900, we lost, and shut down.

  -- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)      [UUCP]
                       (orca!andrew.tektronix@rand-relay)  [ARPA]