>How? Let's say you want to buy a computer and you go direct to, say, Dell. How would you have heard of Dell if not for advertising? Seen a Dell at someone else

>How? Let's say you want to buy a computer and you go direct to, say, Dell. How would you have heard of Dell if not for advertising? Seen a Dell at someone else's house? How did they hear about Dell? It has to start somewhere. You wouldn't go to Dell. You'd go to a forum where people discuss the relative qualities of their machines. You'd ask a friend who knows more than you, or you'd find a site that has a reputation for rating computers in a balanced way (e.g. Consumer Reports.) Dell's advertising conveys no information about Dell, except that it has a high advertising budget, and that it exists. A person who wants to buy a computer would have zero difficulty realizing that Dell exists from any number of sources (for example the top result from the search "buy a computer"), and the advertising budget of a company has no direct relationship with the quality of it's product.