766
Opinion of the Court
see id., at 464, and n. 23, but these detriments are not so inherent or ubiquitous that solicitation of this sort is removed from the ambit of First Amendment protection, cf. United States v. Kokinda, 497 U. S. 720, 725 (1990) (plurality opinion) ("Solicitation is a recognized form of speech protected by the First Amendment"); see also International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U. S. 672, 677 (1992).
In the commercial context, solicitation may have considerable value. Unlike many other forms of commercial expression, solicitation allows direct and spontaneous communication between buyer and seller. A seller has a strong financial incentive to educate the market and stimulate demand for his product or service, so solicitation produces more personal interchange between buyer and seller than would occur if only buyers were permitted to initiate contact. Personal interchange enables a potential buyer to meet and evaluate the person offering the product or service and allows both parties to discuss and negotiate the desired form for the transaction or professional relation. Solicitation also enables the seller to direct his proposals toward those consumers who he has a reason to believe would be most interested in what he has to sell. For the buyer, it provides an opportunity to explore in detail the way in which a particular product or service compares to its alternatives in the market. In particular, with respect to nonstandard products like the professional services offered by CPA's, these benefits are significant.
In denying CPA's and their clients these advantages, Florida's law threatens societal interests in broad access to complete and accurate commercial information that First Amendment coverage of commercial speech is designed to safeguard. See Virginia State Bd. of Pharmacy, supra, at 762-765; Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S. 350, 377-378 (1977); Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 557, 561-562 (1980).
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