International Journal of Marketing Studies; Vol. 4, No. 6; 2012 ISSN 1918-719X E-ISSN 1918-7203 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 174 Evaluation of Retailers’ vs Customers’ Views on the Usage of Advertising as Communication Tool Hemant J. Katole 1 1 Department of Management Sciences (PUMBA), University of Pune, Pune, India Correspondence: Hemant J. Katole, Department of Management Sciences (PUMBA), University of Pune, Pune 411007, India. E-mail: hjkatole@gmail.com Received: September 1, 2012 Accepted: October 23, 2012 Online Published: November 14, 2012 doi:10.5539/ijms.v4n6p174 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijms.v4n6p174 Abstract The basic objective of research paper is to understand the Communication mix strategies adopted by organized retail sector specially related with advertising as a communication tool, and to identify and analyze communication gap between the views of retailer and customer regarding the usage of advertising media as communication tool. Retail advertising is advertising given by the retailers unswervingly to the consumers. Researcher conduct the study of advertising media which includes Cable Television, Newspaper, radio, Hoardings/Billboards, Leaflets/flyers, Magazine, Website / Internet, E-mail. While deciding the sample size of retailers, researcher used disproportionate stratified sampling techniques. The actual survey was conducted amongst store managers of supermarkets, department stores and hypermarket in Pune and PCMC area. Along-with, the primary data was collected amongst customers also. Total 63 store managers and 200 customers were covered for this study. Researcher found out that organized retailers commonly used newspaper, hoardings, leaflets, internet and e-mail to communicate with the customers. In this study, researcher also found out positive & negative communication gap between the views of retailer and customer. Keywords: retail advertising, retail communication mix, retail communication gap 1. Introduction Retailing is resulting from the French word “retaillier” and the meaning is breaking the bulk into pieces. Retailing includes a direct interaction with the customer and the harmonization of business activities from end to end, right from the idea generation stage of a product, to its delivery and post delivery service to the customer. Retailers are using sophisticated communication and information systems to manage their businesses. The most important tool for communicating with the customer is advertising that is retail advertising. An approach to paying for retail advertising whereby the advertising space or time is placed by a local retail store but is partly or fully paid for by a national manufacturer whose product is featured in the advertising. Generally, advertising is done by the manufacturer of the product. Quite often, the retailer carries out some of this advertising. Such advertising focuses almost exclusively on the single attributed product. Those retailers who desire to begin a large scale campaign may, of course, resort to advertising via Cable Television, Newspaper, radio, Hoardings/Billboards, Leaflets/flyers, Magazine, Website / Internet, E-mail. The advertising campaign will be successful if the advertising frequency increase up to five to six times during one or two week so that the customer would aware with the service or product and most important with the store. 2. Review of Literature In strategic retail literature, retail advertising is described by very similar typologies, that distinguishes between short term (promotional advertising) - and long term (corporate advertising) (Cox & Brittain, 1993), or promotional and institutional advertising (Hathcote, 1995). Rossiter & Percy (1997) focuses on the two brands a retailer has to advertise: the products sold and the store brand. Fulop (1988) points out how the retailer mix is composed from a differentiation strategy to promote the store through the retailer name. All the sources emphasise the main goals/objectives as increasing store traffic, creating store loyalty, stabilise volume and placing the store in the consumers’ mind (Hathcote, 1995). These distinctions are based on