Before 1932, Britain’s essentially free-trade policy left barely any scope for reciprocating the preferential tariffs that the Dominions applied to Britain’s exports. Thus, Britain attempted to reciprocate by means of a “soft” trade policy aimed at increasing Britain’s imports from the empire through wide-reaching publicity coordinated by the Empire Marketing Board (EMB). This article, the first econometric assessment of the EMB, argues that there was not a differential increase in the volume of those imports advertised by the EMB. Principal arguments for this failure are that British consumers were frequently unaware of the geographic origin of many commodities and that they tended to identify company brand more than country of origin.

中文翻译：

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大英帝国营销委员会和软贸易政策的失败，1926-33

在 1932 年之前，英国的基本自由贸易政策几乎没有留下任何空间来回报自治领对英国出口征收的优惠关税。因此，英国试图通过由帝国营销委员会（EMB）协调的广泛宣传，通过旨在增加英国从帝国进口的“软”贸易政策来回报。这篇文章是对 EMB 的第一次计量经济学评估，认为 EMB 宣传的进口商品的数量没有差异性增长。这种失败的主要论据是英国消费者经常不知道许多商品的地理来源，并且他们倾向于识别公司品牌而不是原产国。