Advertising, marketing, sales - Essay Example

Advertising, Marketing, Sales The pervasiveness of advertising in the modern world is one of the key features of the consumerist economy. Rarely do people today make decisions on what to buy without the aid of the information provided by advertising on all forms of media. The consumer and the producer are the two parties in the exchange - and each party, on the part of the consumer, his wants and needs and the producer, on his part, the goods or services to give form to those wants and needs. Apparently, the market acts as the clearing ground for this exchange and both parties are satisfied. The role of advertising in the market is purportedly for the purpose of the consumers making informed choices on the myriad of products and services that are available. This is based on the assumption that people more or less know what they want and that producers make available to consumers as much as possible information about the product, within the framework of encapsulating the needs of the consumer. When a situation arises, when these assumptions are questioned, both parties are in danger - on the part of the consumers, vulnerable to undue influence or manipulation as to their needs and wants, and on the part of producers, prone to charges of exploitation and manipulation. In the article, The Dependence Effect by John Kenneth Galbraith, states that modern advertising and salesmanship are the vehicles for which production creates, not merely communicates, the needs and wants that present-day consumers come to identify as their own. He further charges more categorically that "their central function is to create desires - to bring into being wants that previously did not exist." This statement calls into question the assumption of current theory of consumer demand that rests on "independently determined desires", the primary cause that determines the effect of goods being available in the market. If the arrow of the relationship switches, with the producer, through the instruments of advertising and marketing, becoming the creator of the cause of the demand - then the consumer buying goods, has become, rather the effect. The consumer, in this light, has become, a mere automaton, a human being stripped of his freedom, not only to choose, but more likely, inwardly, a being who has lost grip of his primary needs and wants. With the most profitable corporations in today's world, also increasingly the biggest spenders on adverting, and if the scenario of the loss of consumer of freedom holds, then human beings on a wide scale are in danger of becoming mass robots, mere puppets to satisfy the greed of corporations. Galbraith, further raises the specter of public services, becoming more and more neglected as private wants dependent on the output of producers - the case of "an implacable tendency to provide an opulent supply of some things and a niggardly yield of others." This situation, according to the author further leads to social and economic problems as consumers under the influence of the process of production creating more artificial desires fail to make the choice to satisfy their desires for public goods and services. Galbraith has delved into two main critiques: one that, advertising is actually involved in desire creation, rather than the purported function of providing information to the consumers; and two, that in the case of the facts - the amount spent on advertising as indicators of their big role in the production process and in creation of artificial desires, the dependency effect is an overwhelming evidence that producers or the process of production "determines" consumer demands and needs. In response to the first critique, Robert Arrington, provides a more nuanced approach to the charge of advertising controlling the buying behavior of consumers (Advertising and Behavior Control). He examines the concept of autonomy, being "complex and multifaceted". In the case of desire, being autonomous, that is coming independently from the consumer - in reality, he writes, desire can be induced, but this doesn't mean that the desire is no longer legitimately autonomous. Thus, a man who previously does not realize that he wants or needs a car to raise his career or his business to a new level, when he sees a commercial about a car on TV, may be induced to buy the car, not because the advertisement created an artificial desire and thereby made him to buy the car. The need to buy a car, is autonomous, but his behavior to buy it was somewhat made urgent, and somewhat induced, by the advertisement. In the case of rational desire and choice, the question of relevance to the consumer buying it, is a key ingredient. Thus, when advertisers are being charged as not providing as much information as possible to the public, it can be argued that what they do in fact is to package a product according to the relevance to the buying market they are targeting. For instance, an advertiser wants to reach out to the younger set, thus knowing the values, needs and wants of the market, they would package a product targeted to reach this market. In any case, the consumer is the originator of the desire, and the advertiser, merely follow suits to communicate their product meets their desire. A case of however of a consumer being induced to buy a product, and knowing and realizing that it would jeopardize his other wants and needs, may according Arrington falls to the danger of advertising having the power over the consumers who act "involuntarily". In this, free choice of the consumer becomes limited. While, there are cases such as this, Arrington still maintains, that advertising is "innocent of the charge of intrinsically or necessarily" of controlling the behavior of consumers. On the second critique raised by Galbraith that the economic system is flawed, providing the impetus for the endless parade of private wants and desires, to the detriment of public services -- Friedrich von Hayek's The Non Sequitur of the "Dependence Effect argues primarily, that advertising or modern salesmanship is just one of the many causes that determine what the consumer wants or desires. Far from being the sole determinant, Von Hayek, discusses the influence of society or culture apart from advertising that gives rise to consumer demand. Wants and desires that go beyond food, shelter and sex are independent desires arising from the individual and yet are brought to fore within the context of society. In effect, the spontaneous creation of desires and needs does not occur in a vacuum, but happens when the individual becomes acquainted with the cultural environment and assimilated to what is considered legitimate wants and desires. Independent desires includes not only innate desires (arising solely from the individual) but those which he or she views as desirable over the course of surveying or experimenting from what are available in society. In particular, Von Hayek singles out our desire for art and literature as acquired tastes and would not happen if the individual has not had enough exposure to the proper elements. In this case, the production in a way determines the demand - and yet, the demand cannot be shrugged off as in any way as a form of behavior control, just because it occurs in the positive sense. This could be extended in the arena of public education when the society proactively instills the value of appreciation for the arts - again the process of production having a say in the creation of the demand for the arts. What Von Hayek, argues is that Galbraith's charge of the dependency effect, subtly implying that production "determines" consumer behavior overstates the case of the vulnerability of consumers to control or manipulation. While on an individual basis, a consumer may or may not fall to the lure of advertising to create artificial desires - overall, consumers as a whole take stock, among their innate desires, cultural influences as well as advertising to determine what will be rationally best for them to satisfy their demand and desires. "The joint but uncoordinated efforts of the producers merely create one element of the environment by which the wants of the consumers are shaped" writes Von Hayek. Furthermore, the consumer's protection from undue behavior control is assured as producers compete with each other to make their goods and services attractive and credible to the consumers. The consumer thus holds the power of choice among the products available in the market. When a consumer becomes swayed to purchase a good because of advertising, say one that exhorts a man to step up to one's desired status in society, the negative influence of merely "keeping up with the Joneses" is offset by positive or powerful examples as seen in society, one say, that values prudence or spending within one's income, or the like. The point is that advertising or the process of production, is just one of the factors that causes or determines what consumer choice would be. To the implication raised by Galbraith that the dependency effect engenders the creation of wants and desires that are no longer important - and that it is endangering societal needs for public goods, Von Hayek counters that political authorities cannot be arbiters of what people or human being consider important or not. When people act in a way that seemingly to others are not important, who are to say that those needs that they are sacrificing are not important In a way, the modern economic instruments of advertising and salesmanship are imperfect and yet the closest to an efficient mechanism that can help people decide what they want, but the consideration of importance is a matter best left to the individual. Read More