Post by Deleted on Aug 29, 2019 18:20:51 GMT
Yes, sometimes, marketing is a worthy activity. For example, marketing people can help a company develop a more useful product. Also, marketing can help potential customers learn about a new product that's worth considering.
But more often, marketing attempts to manipulate you into spending on something that, if you considered all the relevant factors, you wouldn't spend on.
As dangerous, buying something sub-optimal based on marketing’s having identified and played on your hot buttons diverts you from considering all the key factors. Think, for example, about those ads with a sexy woman draped over a car, when that brand breaks down more and costs more.
Marketing is heavily used to make people buy more expensive products that in fact perform worse or no better, for example, Cartier watches, Liberty Mutual Insurance, T. Rowe Price Investments, and yes, luxury cars. That imposes a significant decrement to a person’s financial security. Too, it can help cause people to choose a less pleasant job to afford stuff that actually is worse, for example, the heavily advertised Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, etc., require more frequent and more expensive trips to the shop for maintenance and break down more than, for example, the much less expensive Toyota, Honda, and Subaru.
Unless a company has a clearly superior product, the firm's advertising tends to avoid the product's substance and, instead, creates an image—sizzle not steak. So, for example, marketing converts commodity products into branded ones, thereby increasing the price dramatically with little or no improvement in quality.
Marketing uses a wealth of other tactics to manipulate you, for example, celebrity endorsements. For example, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid performers who were popular among swing voters: Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Tony Bennett all got checks. Does such marketing help us choose a better president?
Indeed, advertisers focus efforts on those least likely to make thoughtful buying decisions. That’s why they use, for example, Budweiser's Spuds McKenzie, the Geico gecko, and Taco Bell chihuahua. Similarly, companies prey on innocent children with ads to get kids to, for example, eat sugary, artificially flavored, artificially colored cereals. Apart from children’s products, walk the supermarket aisles: The expensive processed foods are more likely to be in bright-colored packaging. No coincidence.
Sometimes, items are priced high merely to create the illusion of superiority. For example, I recall a not-very-selective college—I believe it was Bennington—deliberately pricing itself to be the nation’s most expensive because it felt that would give the college cachet.
Another marketing ploy designed to get people to part with more money without getting commensurate value is to offer three products of a specific type, two of which they don’t expect people to buy: a cheap but clearly inferior one, a very expensive one, and a wildly expensive one That makes consumers feel they’re being wise in choosing the middle one even though it offers worse value per dollar than its juxtaposition implies. The funeral industry has used this ploy to prey on people at one of life’s most vulnerable times. They show the bereaved a $500 casket painted an ugly color, a casket priced at $5,000, and one at $10,000 so people feel they’re being prudent in spending $5,000 for a casket that probably cost the funeral home a few hundred bucks.
Nonprofits aren't immune from using marketing tactics. Fundraisers receive extensive training on the art and science of extracting maximum dollars from people. And nonprofits use children and animals to suck out the dollars. For example, we’ve all seen commercials using bald children with cancer, Africans with pleading eyes, and forlorn animals in the pound facing extermination. That does an excellent job of distracting us from questions that would lead us to wisely allocate our charity dollars, for example, what percentage of donations go to program versus administration? Would donating to your charity yield more benefit than if I gave to charities that third-party evaluations deem to yield more benefit per dollar?
But more often, marketing attempts to manipulate you into spending on something that, if you considered all the relevant factors, you wouldn't spend on.
As dangerous, buying something sub-optimal based on marketing’s having identified and played on your hot buttons diverts you from considering all the key factors. Think, for example, about those ads with a sexy woman draped over a car, when that brand breaks down more and costs more.
Marketing is heavily used to make people buy more expensive products that in fact perform worse or no better, for example, Cartier watches, Liberty Mutual Insurance, T. Rowe Price Investments, and yes, luxury cars. That imposes a significant decrement to a person’s financial security. Too, it can help cause people to choose a less pleasant job to afford stuff that actually is worse, for example, the heavily advertised Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, etc., require more frequent and more expensive trips to the shop for maintenance and break down more than, for example, the much less expensive Toyota, Honda, and Subaru.
Unless a company has a clearly superior product, the firm's advertising tends to avoid the product's substance and, instead, creates an image—sizzle not steak. So, for example, marketing converts commodity products into branded ones, thereby increasing the price dramatically with little or no improvement in quality.
Marketing uses a wealth of other tactics to manipulate you, for example, celebrity endorsements. For example, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid performers who were popular among swing voters: Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Tony Bennett all got checks. Does such marketing help us choose a better president?
Indeed, advertisers focus efforts on those least likely to make thoughtful buying decisions. That’s why they use, for example, Budweiser's Spuds McKenzie, the Geico gecko, and Taco Bell chihuahua. Similarly, companies prey on innocent children with ads to get kids to, for example, eat sugary, artificially flavored, artificially colored cereals. Apart from children’s products, walk the supermarket aisles: The expensive processed foods are more likely to be in bright-colored packaging. No coincidence.
Sometimes, items are priced high merely to create the illusion of superiority. For example, I recall a not-very-selective college—I believe it was Bennington—deliberately pricing itself to be the nation’s most expensive because it felt that would give the college cachet.
Another marketing ploy designed to get people to part with more money without getting commensurate value is to offer three products of a specific type, two of which they don’t expect people to buy: a cheap but clearly inferior one, a very expensive one, and a wildly expensive one That makes consumers feel they’re being wise in choosing the middle one even though it offers worse value per dollar than its juxtaposition implies. The funeral industry has used this ploy to prey on people at one of life’s most vulnerable times. They show the bereaved a $500 casket painted an ugly color, a casket priced at $5,000, and one at $10,000 so people feel they’re being prudent in spending $5,000 for a casket that probably cost the funeral home a few hundred bucks.
Nonprofits aren't immune from using marketing tactics. Fundraisers receive extensive training on the art and science of extracting maximum dollars from people. And nonprofits use children and animals to suck out the dollars. For example, we’ve all seen commercials using bald children with cancer, Africans with pleading eyes, and forlorn animals in the pound facing extermination. That does an excellent job of distracting us from questions that would lead us to wisely allocate our charity dollars, for example, what percentage of donations go to program versus administration? Would donating to your charity yield more benefit than if I gave to charities that third-party evaluations deem to yield more benefit per dollar?
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-life/201701/marketing-is-evil