CONTENTS

A Bigger Bang for the Milk Advertising Buck?

Evaluating Returns to the Cotton Checkoff Program

Editor's Notes

Manager's Viewpoint

Director’s Corner

Next Meeting

NEC-63 Fall 1997 October 6-7, 1997 Washington, DC A Symposium to Examine the Effectiveness of Different Nutrition Education Programs

Director's Corner

by Harry M. Kaiser

The annual meeting of the NICPRE Advisory and Steering Committees will be in September. One major agenda item will be to establish research directions for the upcoming year. I welcome and encourage any comments, suggestions, or research ideas within the realm of commodity promotion economics from anyone receiving this newsletter. Indeed, research is a two-way street and those of us in this field seriously consider feedback by people in industry and government when selecting research topics.

This fall marks the third year that NICPRE has been in existence. I believe that NICPRE has been very productive in conducting and sponsoring research over this time, resulting in an improved understanding of the economic impacts of commodity promotion and advertising. Since 1994, there have been 30 research projects initiated by NICPRE, 62 papers published in alternative outlets, a major database on generic and branded advertising expenditures for all food developed, seven NEC-63 conferences held, and several NICPRE-organized meetings with industry personnel to tackle current economic challenges and opportunities in commodity promotion. Much of the research undertaken by NICPRE has been summarized succinctly in various NICPRE Quarterly articles.

NICPRE has devoted 35-40 percent of its budget to support research at other universities in the United States. This “leveraging” of research dollars has been effective in increasing the amount of research performed and has been quite cost-effective, since many researchers have combined other sources of support with NICPRE to complete the research. The commodities covered by these research projects include milk, cheese, butter, frozen dairy products, beef, cotton, eggs, almonds, wool, and table grapes. While not exhaustive, this has been a fairly large number of commodities studied in a fairly short period of time. In the future, we hope to expand the list of commodities studied.

In closing, I would like to again encourage you to send us any suggestions for future research topics. Our ears are always open.