Book excerpt: From the Abstract: The goal of this thesis is to provide insight into the reasons some consumer goods businesses advertise their products more intensely than do others. More specifically, the aim is to identify those factors which account for the variations in advertising/sales ratios with respect to many different variables as opposed to using only a few different expanatory factors ... The final chapters discuss three major areas for extending and applying the results. These areas are 1) managerial decisions about advertising budgets, 2) market and consumer research into the effects and effectiveness of advertising expenditures, and finally, 3) public policy questions about excessive rates of advertising.