Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1962)

NEW SERIES VOL. 2, No. 32 TELEVISION DIGEST— 9 and fictitious use by retailers. RCA & Westinghouse will further gild the lily by inserting in ads qualifying clauses to notify consumers that the companies do not set & are not responsible for dealers' prices. RCA's ads will carry "manufacturer's nationally advertised price $— ," with qualifier "optional with dealer." GE plans to use such phrases as "less than $ " and "made to sell for approximately $ ." West inghouse, if it decides to use pricing in national TV ads, will use even more elaborate terminology. In addition to "at less than $ " evaluation, it will carry this qualifier : "This approximate price is published only for information & identification and is not necessarily a representative going market price in any market at any given time. Prices may vary from dealer to dealer and market to market." In radio & phono ads in key cities, Westinghouse will have prices identified as "distributor suggested list prices" and will carry the elaborate qualifier, deleting only "market to market" in 2nd sentence. Other manufacturers are quite scornful of this general "less than $ " approach. Zenith Sales Corp. Pres. Leonard C. Truesdell pulled no punches when he told us : "It's negative advertising. It will only aggravate the situation. When you advertise a product at 'less than' you only invite the consumer to expect price cutting. He wants to know how much less he really has to pay for the product. I think it's a very poor approach. We have no intention of changing our present policy of using list prices." Admiral has practically dropped list prices, but has no intention of switching to less-than or other "weasel-worded" terminology. "We see little merit to this approach," Admiral told us. "If you're going to start weasel-wording with such terminology you'll just be serving up the same thing. Our approach is to use more and more open lists. There's a definite trend in that direction." Westinghouse consumer products vp Chris Witting Jr. explained replacement of list prices with "less than" evaluation this way : "If the factory posts a list price, you have the basis for the basic criticism of the FTC and the Better Business Bureaus. The dealer can advertise that 'the factory lists the price at such & such, but we sell it for only this.' If we say it should sell for less than a certain price, we remove a large part of evil that people are worrying about. The valuation merely becomes a guide — an indication to the consumer that we believe the product should sell below a given price." RCA told us pretty much the same thing in much the same language : "The 'less than' approach is an attempt to give the consumer some indication of value, of price range, without any indication that he should use that price as a comparison with the price the dealer charges. We do not want any implication that we're even suggesting the retail price. 'Suggested list' connotes that the manufacturer is seeking, although without compulsion, that the dealer use that price. We believe that 'retail' & 'list' are equally unsuitable words, since both connote that these are the prices that should be charged. We use the terminology 'manufacturer's nationally advertised price' and explain that the price indicated is 'optional with dealer.' Our purpose is to give the prospective customer some indication of value — not the price which he should expect to pay." It would be pertinent at this point to recall that National Better Business Bureau already has taken 1 notice of "less than" approach (Vol. 2:26 pl4) and ruled that the game's the thing, not the name. Pres. Kenneth B. Willson told us : "Fictitious pricing in any form is unlawful." If a dealer "kicks the daylights" out of an I advertised less-than price, he said, "it would give the consumer in that area the false picture" that he's buying at a bargain a product that should sell for markedly more. • • • • Clarification of price confusion & control could come with passage of Quality Stabilization Bill. However, bill introduced Feb. 21 in Senate (S.J. Res. 159) & House (H.R. 10335) has considerable opposition from FTC, Justice Dept., Commerce Dept., for example — and is less than a sure bet to make it. Special subcommittee of Senate Commerce Committee, after failing twice to get quorum of its 5 members to consider bill, recently approved an amended version & reported it out to full committee. On House side. Commerce & Finance Subcommittee of Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee also reported out its bill, which contains some differences from Senate version. In essence, bill seeks quality stabilization by forbidding retailer to (1) use brand-name merchandise in bait ads, (2) misrepresent brand names in ads in order to sell private-label merchandise. It would empower manufacturers to deny their brand name products to retailers who sell them below established prices. As preamble to Senate bill notes. Quality Stabilization legislation seeks "to amend the Federal Trade Commission