Advertising budgeting practices of Belgian Industrial Marketers.

The author reports on the results of a survey of a random sample of 102 belgian industrial companies, which measured which budget setting processes companies use, how they set budgets and the resulting budget composition. The objective of the study was first to compare the results with international practice, and second to try to explain their budgeting practices as a function of company, product and market characteristics measured in the same survey. The major conclusions are mixed: on the negative side, we found a lot of heterogeneity in process usage, budget setting rules and media shares, but not much variance that could be explained with the available independent variables. On the positive side, we discovered that belgian companies are 'well behaved ' according to expectations based on Marketing Theory. Their use of specific communication objectives is for example based on sound principles. One of the major conclusions is that product type is the major determinant of the communication behavior of companies, together with company size, while market factors playa minor role. These results clearly underline the need for effect measurement studies that would help companies set the size of their communication budgets and allocate these budgets over specific media. 3 Advertising budgeting practices of Belgian Industrial Marketers