A little economics for dummies.
When I see a televised commercial or a full-page advertisement for a product, I think to myself
“They have a big budget for marketing.”
A marketing budget should of course be a percentage of expected profit (we assume total agent rationality on the part of the producer, not the consumer).
So they are expecting a lot of profit.
Which means the market pressure or competition is low.
Of course, commercials are for brands or what I call “monopolies on the mind”: Effective advertising shuts of competition, which operates on comparable characteristics of a product, completely. Pepsi can be anything it wants – it can never be Coke.
A brand, to me, is a name for an illusion we buy because we’re too poor to create one ourselves, and materializes in the plethora of advertising, the sky-high profits, and relentless cancerous global growth.
If there is a functioning market for a product that makes sense (where no monopoly on the mind, or brand, is involved), where there is healthy competition, accountability, and a fully informed public, it would drive the price down and the quality up.
Indeed, if you give the “rational agent” some human attributes, rather than forcing them, by means of the Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) and similar methods, to become a slave of the unstoppable profit-machine – you might end up with something remotely useful.
I diverge. All I wanted to say is that when I see a commercial, I automatically think something like the above and have decided not to buy the product before I figure out what it “is” (what material basis underpins the illusion it sells).
I am with you on this one as well!
When a brand is spending so much money on commercials, I for one are not going to buy it. Especially if it is one of the big brands that rule the market. Once I found out that all these products in the shops are in fact all coming from the same brand(s), it changed a lot for me. People may think they have a choice, but this is just not true. The brands give us the illusion of choice, but they are the ones making it for us…..
In fact, I rather buy something that is not advertised at all, but is promoted by word of mouth, by friends or family. And nòt because it is a well-known brand, but just because it is a good product for that pricetag. I have an adversity towards all these brands that advertise themselves as if you are going to be a happy person once you buy their products. Ridiculous!
And all that money spent on advertising and PR, while the products are actually no good in quality compared to the products of some decennia ago. No lifelong guarantees anymore these days, everything is made to be thrown away or discarded in a really short timespan, But then we go into the issue of economics, capitalism, the ever-growing market, etc.
I would welcome change! Esther