Mr. Joseph Strong, of Strong and Warner, milli ners, is interested in nearly fifty retail millinery stores situated in different parts of the United States. He himself superintends from his office in St. Paul, the advertising in each of these stores. The millinery business is built entirely on the fleeting fancy of Her Royal Highness, the Lady-of-Fashion. The hat is a necessity, to be sure, but the particular shape and color of hat that her ladyship will wear depend entirely on her taste or the season's styles. Milliners spend thou sands of dollars to determine in advance what the season's demands will be, but there are always some shapes and colors which do not sell as well as others, and, despite Dame Fashion's rigid dictates, tastes seem to vary in different localities. Mr. Strong re ceives daily reports on chart sheets from each of his stores showing how each of the season's shapes is selling in each color at each price.
When the season is advancing and he sees that in certain cities certain shapes and certain colors at certain prices are not selling, he draws a line across his chart of shapes and colors, running it up and down with the prices, and announces that all hats fall ing in the chart below the line shall sell at a given reduced price, while all those above the line shall re main at their former prices. For example: all purple hats of shape No. 1 selling as high as $12, all black hats of the same shape selling as high as .$10, all purple hats of shape No. 2 selling as high as $9, and all white hats of shape No. 2 selling at $6, shall sell at $5 until further notice. If a week goes by and still there are hats which do not move fast enough, he may draw another line still higher up on the price scale and offer still higher priced hats for $5, or he may use the same line and cut to $4. In making these cuts he never regards the original manufactur ing cost; he bases his prices only on demand, knowing full well that a novelty out of season has practically no selling value.
16. Necessities, luxuries and conveniences.— Staple articles may be divided into three general classes, and advertising campaigns must be conducted with this differentiation clearly in mind. These gen eral classes are : necessities, luxuries and conveni ences. The demand for necessities is universal, while the demand for luxuries must always be limited by the purchasing power of the individual. We eat up today the food we bought yesterday. We wear out the clothing and we consume the fuel we bought a few months ago. Necessity demands that to sustain life and to exist in comfort, we must come back for more. Altho, as civilization advances, it is hard to distinguish the luxuries of yesterday from the necessi ties of today, generally speaking, necessities include chiefly the things required for food, clothing and shelter. The amount of demand for a product will
depend partly upon which group it falls into, necessi ties, luxuries or conveniences.
The great impetus which advertising has gained in the last half century is in part clue to the fact that instead of using the influence of publicity, chiefly to sell patent medicines, fortune tellers' aids and such things which are far from being necessities, it is now used to sell food, shelter and clothing.
17. Making an article a necessity.—Between lux uries and necessities there is another group of things, in which are included, perhaps, the majority of our purchases. They may be called conveniences. A suit of clothes that will protect the wearer from the weather and suitably cover the body may be bought for eight dollars. Such a suit is a necessity. '['he average price paid for ready-made suits, however, is said to be between twenty and twenty-five dollars. The man who pays this much is scarcely buying a lux ury, and vet he is paying more than the strictest necessity demands. A twenty-five dollar suit is a convenience for a multitude of men.
It is within the power of advertising to educate the public to regard as conveniences those things which it has previously regarded as luxuries, and then later to make the conveniences necessities. A bath is a necessity. A bath tub makes the taking of a bath convenient, and it is, therefore, a convenience. A quarter of a century ago a porcelain bath tub was a luxury in the American home. But the porcelain bath tub was so much more convenient than the old English tin foot tub that after people had once used it, they would not be without it. Now we have al most forgotten the old tin tub, and, if we should be forced to return to it, we should feel that we had been deprived of one of the necessities of life.
The Chalmers Automobile Company for several years conducted an advertising campaign the prime object of which was to take the automobile out of the class of luxuries and to put it into the class of conven iences or necessities. The advertising featured the convenience of the automobile to the doctor who by its use was able to make his calls quickly, and its neces sity in those cases in which a life was to be saved and a horse would be too slow. It showed how the auto mobile enabled the business man to make more money, and the family to get out into the healthy open. It pictured the automobile as a necessary contributor to long life, wealth and happiness.