This study examines the often-overlooked effect of product category type—high- vs. low-priced, high- vs. low-frequency, and high- vs. low-perishability—when assessing the effectiveness of product advertisement locations in retailer direct mail flyers. Employing a quasi-experimental design, we analyze a national retail chain’s various featured product weekly advertisements across the transaction records of 1817 products in 225 different product categories that cover a year of sales. All three-product types had a significant moderating effect on increasing the sales volume of the featured products when placed on the interior page feature location. For example, the interior pages are often ignored unless the recipient is sufficiently interested to flip through other parts of the flyer. Placing high-priced products, low-frequency products, and highly perishable products in the interior page feature location led to advertising effectiveness. In terms of frequency, the sales volume of high-frequency products were consistently higher than low-frequency products regardless of the location. On the other hand, the front and back page are the most visible pages of a flyer. In these two most visible locations, placing products that perish quickly maximized the effectiveness of using a flyer. These results highlight the importance of considering these three product types when making retail promotion decisions, including where retailers should position featured products within advertisements.

本研究考察了在评估零售商直邮中产品广告位置的有效性时经常被忽视的产品类别类型的影响——高价与低价、高频与低频、高与低易腐烂传单。我们采用准实验设计，分析了一家全国性零售连锁店的各种特色产品每周广告，涵盖 225 种不同产品类别的 1817 种产品的交易记录，涵盖一年的销售额。三种产品类型均置于内页特色位置对提升特色产品的销量有显着的调节作用。例如，除非收件人有足够的兴趣翻阅传单的其他部分，否则通常会忽略内页。放置高价产品、低频产品、并且高度易腐烂的产品在内部页面特征位置导致了广告效果。频率方面，高频产品销量持续高于低频产品无论位置如何。另一方面，正面和背面是传单中最显眼的页面。在这两个最显眼的地方，放置快速腐烂的产品可以最大限度地提高使用传单的效率。这些结果强调了在做出零售促销决策时考虑这三种产品类型的重要性，包括零售商应该在广告中定位特色产品的位置。