This report documents research findings from a RAND project titled "The Relative Cost Effectiveness of Military Advertising," the goal of which was to develop and apply a methodology for assessing the cost effectiveness of the services' advertising programs and to provide guidance for a more efficient allocation of resources in the future. The project was sponsored by the Director for Accession Policy (Force Management Policy). This report examines issues related to the effectiveness of recruiting advertising during the 1980s and 1990s. It describes the policy context, summarizes the current state of knowledge, and identifies several conceptual and methodological issues. In addition, it describes a framework developed for estimating advertising effects and how that framework was applied in an analysis of 198Os Army advertising programs. It also discusses how this methodology was used to analyze 1993-1997 DoD-wide information. The empirical results from the study strongly support the view that advertising has been a cost effective recruiting tool and provide some guidance for future improvements. Data deficiencies and analytic challenges associated with recruiting environment complexity, however, made it impossible to determine the most effective mix of advertising. Nonetheless, the concepts and methods developed can help guide future advertising research, and the general policy conclusions regarding past advertising programs remain valid. Additional research is necessary if future allocations of recruiting resources, including advertising dollars, are to be made optimally.

The Defense Department has been spending over $100 million annually on recruiting advertising. Previous econometric studies of military advertising's effects have relied on data from time periods unlike today's and have used models possibly inappropriate for supporting today's decisionmakers. This report details improved methods developed to assess military advertising's effectiveness and illustrates them using early 1980s and mid-1990s data.

This report documents research findings from a RAND project titled "The Relative Cost Effectiveness of Military Advertising," the goal of which was to develop and apply a methodology for assessing the cost effectiveness of the services' advertising programs and to provide guidance for a more efficient allocation of resources in the future. The project was sponsored by the Director for Accession Policy (Force Management Policy). This report examines issues related to the effectiveness of recruiting advertising during the 1980s and 1990s. It describes the policy context, summarizes the current state of knowledge, and identifies several conceptual and methodological issues. In addition, it describes a framework developed for estimating advertising effects and how that framework was applied in an analysis of 198Os Army advertising programs. It also discusses how this methodology was used to analyze 1993-1997 DoD-wide information. The empirical results from the study strongly support the view that advertising has been a cost effective recruiting tool and provide some guidance for future improvements. Data deficiencies and analytic challenges associated with recruiting environment complexity, however, made it impossible to determine the most effective mix of advertising. Nonetheless, the concepts and methods developed can help guide future advertising research, and the general policy conclusions regarding past advertising programs remain valid. Additional research is necessary if future allocations of recruiting resources, including advertising dollars, are to be made optimally.

Advertising is one of the central recruiting tools used by the military services in support of the all-volunteer force. This Note analyzes the effects of advertising on recruiting, providing quantitative estimates of the relative effectiveness of Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and joint advertising programs. The findings indicate that, in general, the services gain enlistments from additional advertising, and the gains of any one branch do not seem to come at the expense (in terms of lost recruits) of any other. Not only are there no important interservice competitive effects of advertising, but the advertising done by a service apparently confers important benefits on the other branches as well. Consequently, both service and joint advertising appear to be powerful tools to help meet the recruiting requirements of the all-volunteer armed forces.

Military Recruiting: DOD Needs to Establish Objectives and Measures to Better Evaluate Advertising's Effectiveness