marketing baloney qualified

In a Dilbert cartoon, the boss explains, “We can’t compete on price, features, service, or quality. That leaves fraud — which we’ll call marketing!”

Marketing is not saying what it is not nor is it saying what is.
We make this task easier on the marketer given our conscious or unconscious limitation. The perplexing thing about this is that at one level we as consumers are not aware of this and at the other level our stated beliefs or attitudes could be different from our unconscious attitude and beliefs.

1. Forming preferences can be easily done but we cannot easily explain how. I know how to ride a bike, but how do I explain my ability to ride a bike. What this means is an automatic behaviors is disrupted when people analyze and decompose the automatic response. As long as the automatic behavior is not disrupted, response to stimuli is succinct and clear. Marekters try and keep these automatic response unbroken. (Ice-cream are packed in square cartons/boxes, when packaged in round plastic containers, sales drop, consumers just prefer the cubes to cylinders)

2. Implicit Associations: Associations that are formed in our subconscious. Associations that are in our conscious can be different from the ones in our subconscious. Our attitudes or associations in our conscious can be self stated or evolved depending on our environment however instinctively our associations would revert to our subconscious when provided with a stimulus. Generally we are stereotyped in our subconscious.
(If you tweak the 7-Up color to a slight yellow from the green, consumers feel the taste is tweaked too)

I reckon there could be more facts and research that can assist any marketer in making a monkey of the consumer, but I guess for now it can save us some embarrassment knowing just these 2.

As a species, we tend to think we are independent individuals who make purchase and lifestyle decisions, after filtering out undue influences. This is baloney.