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What McLuhan meant there was brand appeal. The guy with the Rolex is not wearing it, because a Rolex is such a great watch, although he might claim it is. He is
by atoav 4y ago
What McLuhan meant there was brand appeal. The guy with the Rolex is not wearing it, because a Rolex is such a great watch, although he might claim it is. He is wearing it, because of the symbolic value this watch has for him.
There are many products today where this symbolic value outweighs the practical value. E.g. I recall the whole Beats by Dr. Dre Headphone hype. As a musician and audio engineer I know what good headphones sound like and as I planned to get a good pair in that price bracket anyways, I decided to check on them. They sounded literally a magnitude cheaper than they were, yet many people swore this was the best thing since sliced bread. They paid for the brand appeal and for them the brand appeal was part of the use value.
- msla 4y ago> What McLuhan meant there was brand appeal. The guy with the Rolex is not wearing it, because a Rolex is such a great watch, although he might claim it is. He is wearing it, because of the symbolic value this watch has for him. My point is that relatively few items work like this. Literally nobody sees my mouse: I work from home and nobody I live with cares about the brand of mouse I have. Your analysis only works for certain kinds of prestige products, where the brand is part of the price, and fails for anything that has to be useful.
- atoav 4y agoThe idea of marketing is that it influences your buying decision. The Rolex guy thinks he is buying a great watch. We see what is really going on. The thing is: we are not immune to that and when it happens to us, we will just think we are on top of it as well. Products deliver more than just the utility value, otherwise men would buy the "female" variant of a product if it was cheaper, but they are not doing it.