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I've come to this conclusion a long time ago. If consumers have perfect information about a class of product from different producers then advertising would be
by treyd 3y ago
I've come to this conclusion a long time ago. If consumers have perfect information about a class of product from different producers then advertising would be completely useless and the market for that product would be completely efficient (on the consumer side). Of course consumers don't have perfect information, and that's what the marketing industry claims their purpose is to address.
But really the role that the marketing industry (at least for typical products and services) actually plays is to selectively give information to consumers to influence their buying decisions against how they would behave in an efficient market. And then it's a very short and slippery slope to just straight up lying about products and manipulating consumers through their insecurities, which we see happening all the time with how the marketing industry has developed for the last few decades especially with online advertisements.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoIt's corporate behaviour modification and social engineering. Perhaps not a surprise to anyone familiar with Bernays and his Propaganda. I don't see it as information asymmetry, so much as mostly mediocre products and services designed to a budget trying to look more exciting and life-changing than they could ever hope to be. The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.
- daddylongstroke 3y ago>The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it. Yes, exactly this right here. It was straight up bizarre to grow up with near 0 advertising in commie Eastern Europe and get hit with a shockwave of fairly disgusting ad bullshit when we moved to the US. I was shocked at people putting up with it as if it is something to be tolerated instead of burned to ashes. I continue to be shocked.
- JetSpiegel 3y agoI don't think is socially acceptable in the West to mention the good parts of the other side of the Iron Curtain. You must always mention the Stasi. Even though the Berlin wall came down 30 years ago, the End of History ethos remains.
- locopati 3y agoI mean, the Stasi was pretty bad. Soviet political prisons were pretty bad. I'll take advertising as the cost of doing business if that's the alternative.
- JetSpiegel 3y agoBut is it? Was the Stasi responsible for the lack of advertisements? I would argue it's completely orthogonal. You can selective adopt other cultural practices. Resistance to advertising does not imply mass surveillance, it's actually the opposite.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]