Commentary—Approaches to Promotion Evaluation: A Practitioner's Viewpoint

As a marketing practitioner, I applaud Messrs. Abraham and Lodish and Messrs. Blattberg and Levin for attempting to unravel the effects of promotional actions, especially those directed at the retail trade. Both papers demonstrate a keen awareness of the “messy” problems confronting practitioners, such as gaps in companies' internal records, numerous deviations from nominal promotional plans, inadequacies in the common sources of competitive sales data, and the confounding of various merchandising actions.