The advertising regulations may make it harder for a new product to enter the market, or to boost brand-switching.

You are unlikely to achieve brand-switching, and all you will succeed in doing is making profligate use of your valuable resources.

If so, it is failing, for brand-switching is so frequent and common that it has become, in the words of one food industry publication, "one of the national advertiser's major headaches."

To build attitudes that lead to brand switching may require more.

When an out-of-stock leads to purchase of a competing brand, the consumer trial can lead to possible permanent brand switching as well.

"Stadium signage, like all cigarette brand advertising," she said, "is designed to reinforce brand loyalty among existing smokers and encourage brand switching."

So makers of consumer products, who rely on coupons to introduce new products and to encourage brand switching, are turning to coupons issued at the supermarket checkout.