On the superiority of pulsing under a concave advertising market potential function

The authors study the superiority of advertising pulsing policy (turning advertising on and off in a cyclic fashion) over its uniform (constant spending) counterpart that costs the same under the assumption that sales dynamics follow a modified Vidale–Wolfe aggregate advertising model. The authors show that pulsing can be superior if the product of the concave market potential function and the linear or concave advertising response function is convex in advertising. Similar to previous studies in the literature, the average undiscounted profit over the infinite planning horizon is considered as a performance measure according to which alternative advertising pulsation policies are compared. Employing a well-known data set relating advertising to sales, the above convexity requirement is empirically supported and the superiority of pulsing is established numerically. The performance of the proposed model is found to be superior to two rival models using a one-step-ahead forecasting procedure. The analytical findings of the study are documented into six theoretical results for which proofs are relegated to a separate appendix. Managerial implications of the study and directions for future research are also discussed.