> There is no meaningfull way to understand why people pay many 1000$ for a pair of shoes without first establishing that humans build societies with a culture that is largely decoupled from biological imperatives.
Status seeking would likely be the biological imperative. Of course the specific desire is going to be culturally dependent.
> Do you assume that humans in the past were incapable of creating desires?
I assume that desires are not created but rather channelled or cultivated within their cultural context based on what's available. Sure, someone with a new product is going to use advertising to try and influence consumers to buy their product. But this assumes their product is something consumers would desire, or something that can be associated with something consumers desire, such as status or convenience.
> Desire is not a bad thing, and the reason why someone wants something doesn't matter after the point at which they want it.
It matters if they didn't want the product before your marketing campaign, and started to want it after. Desire itself is not a bad thing. Inducing desire in people is a completely different topic.
> I'd much rather people have agency over their decisions
Sure. And marketing as an industry mostly works to override people's agency. That's what all the tricks from Cialdini's book do. That's why the industry is so keenly weaponizing research from psychology and cognitive sciences.
> Also products are definitely getting better all the time.
That's a tangential topic (and a big one), but I very much question the thing those products are getting better at. It somehow never is about maximizing value to the buyer. Quite the opposite, actually - everything from white goods through tools, clothing, cars, to software, is getting less useful, more disposable, less repariable, of worse quality, and locked behind DRMs and service-instead-of-product schemes.
> Except this particular social signal was entirely made up by a corporation.
They didn't make it up, they just made a display of wealth (and therefore social status) associated with their product. Brands do that all the time but the signal has always existed.
The advertising serves to put the association between the product and wealth into the common knowledge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic). Or in other words, everybody knows that everybody knows that rings are expensive.
> Social signals that cost significant resources for something worthless are stupid.
No, you just don't understand social signals, which was my point. The "costing significant resources" part is the whole idea. Wedding rings and fresh kicks aren't expensive because they're valuable, they're valuable because they're expensive. If you want to understand the idea, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory#Honest_signa.... It makes perfect sense (ie, it's rational).
It's equivalent to saying, "I am willing to burn all of this valuable money to prove that I value you".
If we only bought things that were of purely-material value, we'd stop at food, weather-protective but un-aesthetic clothing, and basic shelter. Everything beyond those is social (or hyperreal).
> But, hey, that's why people buy/wear different things.
I often wonder if the motto let's have our own tastes and buy different things is not just some recent invention intended to help us spend more money. I wonder if in the past, e.g.in the middle age, people were that much obsessed by external differentiating assets like clothes, perfumes, shoes and so on. Maybe, just maybe, this is a vast scam. And maybe without ads and tv we would be very happy to wear similar clothes, and let other things, more important things like intelligence or knowledge, differentiate us from the crowd.
> They want them because of a trend and advertising
>>Yes. Humans are not rational economic actors. Humans are social creatures that can be manipulated through social engineering. That is my point. Holding a gun to a person's head is the most blunt and crude form of manipulation and also happens to be illegal. Modern advertising is a lot more refined than that.
Agreed
> It is profitable because it what the consumer wants.
>>If you mean "it's profitable because it sells", then that is nearly tautological and I have no idea why you'd feel like you'd have to say that. What I assumed you meant was what people usually mean, i.e. "it is profitable because it fulfills a pre-existing need consumers wish to satisfy".
My point is closer to what you called tautological, and my point is that it is not accurate to attribute choice, agency, or control to the consumer, while attributing full agency, control, and responsibility to seller. If you want to make a critical judgement about corporations selling crap for profit, at a minimum, you have to be open to a critical judgement about consumers wanting crap. There is a duality to it and feedback loop. If people weren't hungry to buy prestige, sex appeal, or fleeting distractions from their problems, crap wouldnt sell, and advertising for it wouldnt work.
Restated, what I object to is holding individual human desires and preference as flawless or perfect, and refusing to acknowledge the causal role it plays in what products are produced and profitable.
You can't simultaneously hold that corporations are exploiting a flaw in consumer psychology without admitting that consumers have a psychological flaw.
>The reason everyone's buying these overpriced coffee mugs is not that they need coffee mugs, it's that they have an induced desire for what that specific brand of coffee mugs represents....Either you're the one perfectly rational human who is more immune to social cues than the most autistic introvert, or you've just discovered that you're not part of the target audience of fancy fashion lifestyle coffee mugs. There is more than one consumer identity.
The fact that different target markets exist is itself evidence that differences exist in consumer desire and response to advertising. People have different levels of response to advertising, and different response to different kinds. I dont claim to be immune to it, but I do think that people can be more or less susceptible, and personally strive to align my consumption with realistic long term self interest.
I think that individuals play a role in commodification and consumerist behavior, and this can be reduced by thought, introspection, and cultural shifts. If there is a "solution", I dont think it is a world where individuals are lusting for crap that provides distraction or short-term satisfaction, and corporate restraint is only thing that keeps it from being produced.
Each of your core claims have corollaries:
>1. It is more profitable to induce a perceived need than to find a pre-existing need.
I dont know if I agree. The world has a lot of real big and expensive problems. Housing, healthcare, human development, sustainability. There is a lot of money to be made if individuals see these as a priority.
>2. It is more profitable to only fulfill a need temporarily so you can sell to the same consumers multiple times.
Customers prefer cheap short term solutions to more expensive or painful long term solutions. Long term solutions are expensive. See #1
>3. It is more profitable to fulfill a need inadequately so consumers don't stop looking for a new way to fulfill the need after the purchase.
Buy it for life products exist, and most dont buy them, for various reasons. Somehow advertising is less effective.
>Ideal brains would search for what they need, and buy the most fitting thing.
That's not really how things work - there are certain things you need to accomplish other things where your reasoning partially applies but even then it's debatable. But then there are things you do for pleasure - and how you value those things can be completely separate from their physical properties.
For example there was a study[1] where they gave people 5 vine samples, a cheap wine with 5$ price tag, same wine with a 45$ price tag, 90$ vine and the same 90$ vine with a 10$ label, and a correctly labeled 35$ vine. They found that reported enjoyment and measured fMRI activity went up with price even for same vine. Plenty of similar studies that show similar effects for branding, etc. So these things actually create value even if they don't physically change the product - you end up enjoying it more and it's purpose is your enjoyment.
I mean most of the high end stuff ends up being blowing smoke up your ass to make you feel good about paying 2-10x markup, even when the quality is superior they bundle the bullshit and inflate the price extra because they know you'll pay.
>> for example Nike shoes are made in China and sold at insane markups...simply because of advertising/propaganda/branding
This is part of it. It couldn't also be because that Nike shoes (Blue Ribbon before them) made a superior product that matched the needs of the market for years on end, could it? Are all sales and mega corporations only due to advertising and propaganda? Or could quality maybe have some part of it?
>Is that manipulation of his preferences for good skateboarding shoes, the ad making him impulsive and changing his desires and making him buy a worse product?
In your example, yes.
>Or is the ad informing him he can buy access to a spirit that will accompany him on his self selected journey and help his own desires?
No.
One shoe is better for its purpose, the other has stronger associations with positive ideas and feelings.
The quality of the shoe you buy is the necessary determinant of how well it will perform.
Conversely, the brand you buy from is not necessary to having certain thoughts, feelings, dreams, aspirations, etc.
The notion that buying X product with Y association in some way supports Y is exactly the deception. Flowery language about buying access/hope/a way of life is romanticizing the deception.
Do consumers want it, or is it merely taking advantage of some more subconscious human behavior patterns. And if the latter, is this something that is bad for humankind?
> So it comes down to this: If everyone is able to convince me that their product is a necessity, then I'll end up acquiring all of those products, but only some of them will be paid for.
Wait, you're saying 'only some of them will be paid for', even though you've been convinced all the products are 'a necessity'. A more succinct way of putting this, that I believe loses none of the intended meaning, is 'I want I want I want.' Of course, this behaviour is not to be blamed on you, poor consumer, for you live in an awful society which has bombarded -- yes, bombarded -- you with vile and shrill marketing in order to trick you into thinking you need it. The horror, the horror!
> If you're completely satisfied with your material needs, a marketer is going to have a very tough time selling you on something.
I'd argue that the way it works is that they create desire on the one hand and sell their products as solutions to things that they aren't on the other. To explain the latter, for example, selling beer or handbags to fill a need for self-esteem or something.
If you think about it, a lot of people have most of what they need and are persuaded by these created desires anyway.
Then you also have to consider that people are trying to get you to buy their butter rather than the other butter. That's the third part.
In summary, being satisfied is not a defense since they can make you unsatisfied.
> the human brain doesn't know if it likes something until it encounters it, given environmental, emotional and cultural cues at the time.
That's what I keep repeating to people who say that "oh, we're just making what our customers want!". No, customers don't want shit by themselves; it's mostly the options available and marketing effort around them that create shopping patterns.
Which 'this' do you mean? There is the 'this' where other people buy stupid things (meaning 'smart' things, in the marketing terminology we've had foisted upon us), and there is the 'this' where I can't buy what I want. Phones and TVs are examples of both, to be sure; but, as I mentioned in the comment to which you are responding, these two phenomena seem different, though linked, and it's not clear to me that the former is inherently bad.
> Wow, I had no idea that human beings were such simple creatures that they could be compelled to purchase goods and services against their best interests by a simple flashing picture
People's moment to moment interests often differ from their stated long-term interests. If this were untrue, impulse purchases would be impossible. How do you explain impulse purchases? How do you explain people who "want to lose weight", yet eat an extra snack that they know they shouldn't eat.
Notice that I didn't write "compelled", anywhere. That's your choice of words, and it creates a straw-man argument. "Enticed" would be closer to the mark.
Let's examine this claim of yours that "there's nothing wrong with being persuasive". Persuasion doesn't exist by itself. One tries to persuade someone of something. Considering persuasion alone, without considering the context is not very deep thinking.
If I try to persuade you to believe something that is untrue, or that is likely not in your best interest, then actually, there is something wrong with that persuasion.
I'm arguing here, not for the sake of arguing, but to persuade you of something that I believe is true. While many advertisers may believe their own claims, many do not. Furthermore, many who believe their own claims do so out of a failure to question them with the same rigour as they might question a position they disagree with.
Going meta, the pattern I see in your response is that you take what I wrote to an absurd extreme, and then point out the absurdity of (your interpretation) of my argument. What do you think of this?
> This kind of transaction is exactly what modern capitalism is trying to stamp out.
Yet again modern capitalism is blamed for its users' lack of taste: people genuinely prefer new, crappier stuff to classier, old items. This is the same with Tik Tok algos, tailors being unpopular compared to fast fashion and even overpriced luxury brands, fast food vs cooking, etc.
Virtually every time a consumer is confronted with a lousier but easily available option and a vastly superior one but requiring some mental, or occasionally physical, effort, they choose the former.
Capitalism merely holds up a mirror to our preferences. As it turns out, we really don't like it.
> The purchase of a Rolex or Ferrari - or an incredibly overpriced sound system - is an attempt to buy a signal to others that you have taste. In fact you’re signaling how much your lack of taste is costing you.
This is just a fundamental part of what it means to be human. Most of us are guilty of the same behavior on some scale; for example, you might purchase a MacBook when any laptop will compile and run TypeScript just fine.
> People interested in having something will find a way to know about them.
[Citation needed]
This is might be true with commodity products, but with disruptive products—the kind most people here are producing or selling—that's absolutely not the case.
> If I don't know those shoes exist, I will live happily, because I have no fabricated need to fulfill (and most probably if I'll know about them it's because a friend is wearing them).
Everybody has "needs" they're not fulfilling. Some of those needs are caused by problems the individual isn't consciously aware of. Some of them are caused by problems the individual is aware of, but isn't aware of the available solutions. Marketing that seeks to educate the individual about the solutions available to them is a net-positive, both for the consumer and the producer.
> You're assuming fictional consumer behavior based on theories that do not comport with reality.
Yes, I understand that this is your original argument. You don't believe that established economic theories like supply and demand apply in today's society.
> Nike's markup isn't correlated to what they pay for labor. There are plenty of other shoe companies that pay the same for slave labor and charge only a fraction of what Nike charges. People who pay $100 for a shoe that costs .50 cents to make aren't the "rational consumers" whose behavior is supposedly described by economic theories.
Nike gets a higher price because of the strength of their brand. When I talk about their competitors, I'm referring to other premium sneaker brands like Adidas, Asics, and Puma.
In fact, premium brands aren't an appropriate example for either of our arguments. It's not appropriate for my argument, since there is in fact a well known psychological effect (contrary to your claim) where consumers assume higher prices are associated with exclusivity and luxury. This can change the equation of how cost inputs effect price equilibrium.
It's also a poor example for your argument, since we are talking about people who may not be able to afford sneakers due to rising prices that allegedly break the laws of supply in demand. For that discussion, we'd need to use an example of a brand perceived as affordably-priced, not luxury-priced. (I could go on Amazon and find some, but their brand probably wouldn't be recognizable anyway, which is part of the point.) Those brands do compete on price, and cost inputs like labor absolutely effect what they charge consumers.
>If a product finds some customers (maybe ultimately unsatisfied, or disappointed, or gaslighted customers), there must be a need that the product is filling.
Well, I'm a believer in an objective world in which not all needs are equal.
I can accept that which need is important or not can be difficult to ascertain. But I also hold that in many, if not most, cases, it's very easy.
Despite the cult of the individual and the reverence with which subjective taste is held, I'd go on record to say that some (most) people have buy products that fulfill irrelevant non-needs.
For an easy to agree with (but real) example, heroin addicts ands Milli Vanilli listeners both buy products that "fill a need". The question is more whether they should.
There's an entire branch of social science that spends a lot of time on marketing, sociology. I recommend reading up on it from an academic perspective. Marketing is very influential but it isn't mind control. I'd say it shapes expectations more than create demand for particular products. And from an anthropological perspective I'd say marketing actually reveals more about a culture than it creates.
Status seeking would likely be the biological imperative. Of course the specific desire is going to be culturally dependent.
> Do you assume that humans in the past were incapable of creating desires?
I assume that desires are not created but rather channelled or cultivated within their cultural context based on what's available. Sure, someone with a new product is going to use advertising to try and influence consumers to buy their product. But this assumes their product is something consumers would desire, or something that can be associated with something consumers desire, such as status or convenience.
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