ALTERNATIVE REPLY VEHICLES IN DIRECT-RESPONSE ADVERTISING

Surveys of two consumer markets and one business-to-business market in the United Kingdom question the generality of a recent finding that c onsumers expending more effort to request information from advertisers are more likely to buy the product. This finding is confirmed, but no t strongly, in the United Kingdom consumer markets; but results from t he business-to-business market strongly support the conventional direc t-marketing wisdom that response should be made as easy as possible. I n this market the easier inquiry methods produced better results in te rms of quantity of inquiries, conversion rates, and revenue per inquir y.