U.S. Army Advertising from the Recruits' Viewpoint

摘要

This paper focuses on the recruits' self-reported media habits, recall of Army advertising by media, and reported response to Army advertising. This paper examines the media habits of Army recruits and profiles the media that are most likely to draw an audience from which the Army needs to recruit in order to sustain a high quality force. While there are many commercial vendors for information on the media habits of young Americans, they are all geared to reporting results only in terms of who is likely to buy a product among those who can afford to buy. The military services cannot depend just on these commercial services to tell them how to reach military-service qualified youth. Recruits were surveyed upon accessioning at all Army Reception Stations. Data from the 1982 and 1983 ARI New Recruit Surveys were examined using log-linear modeling techniques. Media habits were found to differ in significant ways by recruit demographic characteristics (e.g., age, region of country, sex, and ethnic group) as well as recruit quality indicators (i.e., Armed Forces Qualification Test Scores and education). Targeting of Army advertising was shown to be successful in cases like the direct mail campaign to high school students--high school graduates recall the advertising to a much greater extent than do nongraduates over and above any differences in recall related to AFQT. Findings have been utilized in advertising program reviews and program development.