title: Understanding advertising in pet nutrition.
abstract: Advertising is part of the effort to attract attention of consumers to products, in this case, pet foods. It is generally benign in its effect, but it can be misleading, although rarely deliberately so. It uses a specialized vocabulary, which must be mastered if one is to understand what is intended. For all of the expense and effort, advertising figures directly in relatively few decisions to purchase. Its main intention is to call our attention to a particular pet food and to give that product an image. If the pet food does not perform in the consumer's hands, then all of the advertising on earth will not be persuasive. On the other hand, if a product performs well, the word-of-mouth will be positive and that mode of advertising is one of the most effective.
authors.affiliation: Department of Veterinary and Animal Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 01003.
authors.forename: R G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D000329:Advertising; D000824:Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D000818:Animals; D000829:Animals, Domestic; D005525:Food-Processing Industry