Word: marketing
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week, as it celebrated its tenth anniversary, WDIA changed hands for $1,000,000. The thumping price, biggest ever paid for a Negro station, pointed up the findings of a study just released by the Radio Advertising Bureau: "The Negro market can make-or break-the sales programs of even the biggest advertisers. These 17.3 million customers are growing in power and influence . . . faster than the U.S. average." Though Negro stations were unheard-of ten years ago, they prosper today in every sizable city in the South, and in big cities up North...
...notable example was the stock market, which started out strong, bouncing up 8.30 points to 441.04 on the Dow-Jones industrials average. But as the week progressed, a new report on railroad freight-car loadings showed a sharp drop to 703,688 cars for the week or 13.8% below 1956 levels; loadings of grain, ore and manufactured goods were all down. What worried Wall Streeters was the fact that freight-car loadings normally increase until the end of October, then fall off steadily until year's end. This year the decline started several weeks early, due largely, according...
...first place, the index is not supposed to be a true measure of the cost of living. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out, it is only a measure of what families in the under-$10,000-a-year bracket, living chiefly in cities, pay for the "market basket" of 300 goods and services that such representative families presumably buy. The index shows the price increase since 1947-49, the base year, but no economist regards it as reliable except for the short...
Even on the narrow issue of measuring prices, the index is vulnerable. Food costs make up 30.1% of the market basket, but BLS does not check food stores on weekends, when most stores run their big sales and do most of their selling. BLS prices appliances in department stores, but not in discount houses, contends that discount prices are not really savings because they do not include delivery or service, although many discount houses now provide both. It asks auto dealers for an estimated selling price, does not check the deals that hard-bargaining buyers actually...
Despite the index's flaws, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gets little support from Congress in trying to improve it. Only this year BLS tried to resume spot checks in several cities on actual consumer expenditures to see how representative its market basket is. But Congress refused to appropriate the trifling $115,000 needed. Doing his best with the tools Congress allows him, Commissioner Clague is considering asking Congress for funds to revise the index completely. Many economists believe that such an expenditure would be justified, so that BLS can find out exactly how U.S. families spend their money...