Are you suddenly overcome with the impulse to buy this product? As we all know, the first and foremost purpose of advertising is to sell products. However, this is done indirectly. Rarely do advertisers truly expect consumers to rush out and buy a product after viewing an advertisement. In fact, in the industry, advertisers refuse to be held accountable by their clients for sales. So how does advertising work? As an advertising graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, I have been asked to answer the above question for Professor John Leckenby's "Theories of Persuasive Communication and Consumer Decision Making" seminar. Christiana Mavromatis