How to attract people's ears, eyes, and, eventually, their pockets? This is the question that preoccupies producers when considering advertising. Why, by what mechanism, advertising succeeds in achieving these outcomes is the question that many writers have raised. Both questions will be examined here from a somewhat new angle, which suggests that advertising can be viewed as one particular competitive strategy that, by reminding customers of a possibility (in numerous imaginative ways), lowers the full price of using a product.

Even those skeptical of advertising admit that it is necessary to use it in order to provide information on new products. But they make the accurate observation that most advertising is not of this type. Advertising is most intensive for products where many brands already exist and buyers are fickle (thus causing rapid shifts in shares of sales); but advertising does not have an impact on the sales of all brands taken together. Such repetitive advertising is mainly examined here.

The views presented in this chapter are simple: In contrast to the unique advertising that announces the introduction of novel products, thus informing the public of a new way to spend their money, the role of intensive, repetitive advertising is either to shift uncommitted customers from one brand to another or to prevent the already existing customers from forgetting an option.