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After discussing the value of trademarks to consumers and businesses, the authors outline the major objectives of trademark law. The authors review recent federal trademark infringement cases that involve the use of disclaimers, in terms of the extent to which disclaimers reduce the likelihood of consumer confusion. The authors then note recent trends and provide suggestions for further research.

The authors review the principal surveys offered as evidence in FTC v. Kraft, Inc. (1991). The authors explain that the FTC's survey (Stewart 1987) is flawed in universe definition, question wording, experimental design, and analyses, and argue that though Kraft's survey (Jacoby 1988) employed generally recognized and accepted scientific practices, especially as applied in surveys conducted for litigated matters, the FTC Commissioners relied on the survey proffered by the FTC Staff. In addition, they dismissed Kraft's main findings and only relied on it for the one uncontested finding that supported the FTC's position. The authors discuss the implications of such actions and also respond to Stewart's (1995) article, which presents contrasting analyses.

The preceding commentaries offer interesting perspectives. As might be expected, we agree with some of the points raised but disagree with many others. Given the editor's request for a short and tight rejoinder, we only address points of disagreement. Our comments generally follow the order in which these points were raised.

Important conceptual-definitional and empirical issues previously have been raised with regard to information overload in the consumer context. The primary purpose of this rejoinder is to highlight points of agreement and disagreement and thus bring closer a resolution of the issues.

Brand loyalty is first distinguished from simple repeat purchasing behavior and then conceptually defined in terms of six necessary and collectively sufficient conditions. An experiment designed to test this conceptualization provided strong empirical support for the distinction as conceptualized.

The major findings of a large scale AAAA study into the miscomprehension of televised communication are summarized. Implications for advertising research and public policy are discussed.

The amount of time, effort, and money invested to promote prescription drugs in this country is staggering. It is estimated that over $1 billion are spent annually to disseminate information to the physician. This figure is more than three times the total annual budget of all U.S. medical schools, and it constitutes $1 out of every $1000 of the American gross national product. Drug promotion was not regulated with any consistency until the early 1960s. At that time, disclosures before Senator Kefauver's Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly revealed that advertising to the medical professions had resulted in serious abuses which required new, specific controls for the protection of the public. On October 10, 1962, the Drug Amendments to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act gave jurisdiction over prescription drug advertising to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In most cases, whether a prescription drug advertisement is false can be objectively determined and is independent of any impact it may have on the consumer. For example, if an ad for a penicillin medication claims that it can cure certain types of breast cancer, this claim can be objectively disproved without any input from the consumer/reader of that ad. The difficulty lies mainly with the advertisement that contains true, letter-perfect information from a regulatory standpoint, yet still creates a misleading impression.

If the meaning contained in a remedial message has not been satisfactorily comprehended, then its intended impact upon consumer beliefs cannot logically be achieved. The present investigation, employing three heterogeneous samples, found that remedial messages using “plain English” developed and proposed by the FTC may be widely misunderstood by large segments of the population.

In concluding his review of the psychological literature relating to the study of creativity, Golann (1963) states his "belief that the use of theoretically derived personality factors as criterion variables has . . . been neglected, yet holds most promise of providing a functional developmental understanding of creativity" (p. 561). Specifically, in "such an approach our criterion variables might be tolerance for or seeking of ambiguity, openness to experience . . . internal frames of evaluation, or independence of judgment, to name but a few theoretically based descriptive concepts which appear again and again in the literature and deserve further investigation" (p. 561). The cluster of traits which Golann cites appears to represent a good thumbnail sketch of the open-minded individual as described by Rokeach ( 1960). Indeed, in a more recent paper, Rokeach (1965) suggests that open-mindedness may be a prerequisite (in the sense of a necessary but insufficient condition) for creativity. Rokeach's "Dogmatism Scale" and Mednick's "Remote Associates Test" (RAT) were administered to 24 graduate students enrolled in a course in business administration at George Washington University during the Fall of 1966. The RAT is a test of creativicy based upon Mednick's theoretical interpretation of the creative process as one which involves the forming of associations between mutually remote cognitive elements (Mednick, 1962; Mednick & Mednick, 1964). It was predicted that scores on the Dogmatism Scale would be inversely related to performance on the RAT. The resulting correlation coefficient, -.248, though in the predicted direction, failed to reach statistical significance (9 = .12). However, the results are suggestive and it appears that further research into the relationship between dogmacism and creativity is warranted.