And it puzzled me because I had seen the same issue on sale in Manchester without any gift. Clearly, people in Wales were getting the same magazine, but all packaged up in a special plastic jacket with this gift inside. Why, I wondered, were people in my area losing out?

我十分不解，因为我在曼彻斯特也看到那期的杂志，但没有附赠任何礼品aXc%!plGO#。显然，威尔士人买到的是同一本杂志，只不过他们买到的是精心包装在别致塑料封套里还配送了礼物的版本]yu_-=fEa6。我就想，我们那边的人为什么就没有礼物？

Well, of course, the answer lies in the marketing policy of the magazine itself. No use giving everyone a freebie because then there'd be no way of gauging how successful it'd been in drumming up extra sales. In other words, it's a controlled experiment. In this case, flat sales of Prime in Manchester, coupled with strong sales in Wales, would indicate that the gift had done the trick, and this type of strategy is vital for magazines as more and more titles crowd the racks.

当然，答案就在杂志的营销策略里u^fqw~FDnc=fxUn7YM。让每个人都拿到赠品是没有意义的，因为那样就无法衡量赠品在带动销量方面的作用到底有多大%^8VeQMgjz!。换句话说，这是一个控制变量的实验b0,%gI9TNbjGBcIILgr。就拿这次来说，如果Prime杂志在曼彻斯特销量平平，而在威尔士销路旺盛，就说明礼品投放成功了，这种策略对于杂志来说至关重要，因为市面上的杂志已经越来越多了Pd_uaeme@^0s#lgMLkSK。