My answer to Is marketing good or bad from an economic perspective?
Answer by Desmond Last:
When you first saw the car you wanted on television was the impression it created the same as the experience you had during the purchase process? When your Government talks to you through the media does their reality match yours? When the CEO of Facebook gives his Grand Design for the future of his company are you as one of his customers included in his vision?
We used to be customers and those who provided us with their services were required to supply their output to match our needs.
Not anymore. We are now required to adapt and conform to their requirements .
We must fit into their marketing plans and the bigger they get the smaller we become in our ability to influence our decisions.
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook all our companies who we the people have made rich. They cannot exist without us. Yet their marketing is not about how they can respond to our needs but how we are going to respond to theirs.
Our Government's market themselves on their expensive and impenetrable websites. Never providing an answer only provoking frustration and discontent,
‘Bailiffs at your door’. Not a problem. Go to the Government website and in 21 days you will get a response. In the meantime live on the street.
Been victims of filthy insults on Facebook? Not a problem block them. So they can use another one of their 50 alises.
Has your child been stalked on Facebook? That’s ok use your parental control so the next paedophile can pretend to be a 10 year old kid.
Happy to have Microsoft mine your data without your consent and use it to sell to you? Good, except that data is also loved by the CIA and MI5.
Love CNN and the BBC as they market how much they listen to you the viewers? That is until the Government tells them to block your Facebook posts or tweets.
Marketing creates demand. That is good from an economic perspective. But marketing which leads to a false expectation is bad. This then creates customer disaffection which either increases unnecessary competition or eventually leads to costly court cases and company failure.
It is also used to inflate the share price for the benefit of the board or founder members, and not the shareholder and the customer.
It can hide the reality of the market from the shareholders who become blinded by the marketing. This can artificially inflate the share price. When the market for those companies whose marketing is furthest from the reality collapses, due to a credit bubble burst, their share price is the most vulnerable.
As a society we do not benefit by marketing that does not match the reality of the experience. It divorces those who make decisions from those who experience the results of their decisions.
Is marketing good or bad from an economic perspective?
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