Advertising Helps People Enjoy Things More
| July 30, 2010
I’ve often had a hard time justifying to myself the fact that I spend so much of my time and energy creating advertising. Does advertising in and of itself provide any social benefit to anyone, or is it just contributing to the clutter and overall deluge information infiltrating every party of our everyday lives? A college buddy of mine suggested I look up this article – http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9849949-39.html – which I found very heartening. As it turns out, advertising can contribute to the pleasure people experience consuming the goods we advertise:
[This] research, along with other studies the authors allude to, are putting a serious dent in economists’ notions that experienced pleasantness of a product is based on its intrinsic qualities.
Contrary to the basic assumptions of economics, several studies have provided behavioral evidence that marketing actions can successfully affect experienced pleasantness by manipulating nonintrinsic attributes of goods. For example, knowledge of a beer’s ingredients and brand can affect reported taste quality, and the reported enjoyment of a film is influenced by expectations about its quality,” the researchers said. ?Even more intriguingly, changing the price at which an energy drink is purchased can influence the ability to solve puzzles.? ?
-Stephen Shankland quoting a research scientist involved in the research.
I like thinking that if I write a good ad, it could help people enjoy whatever I?m pushing more than they would if they hadn’t seen the ad.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9849949-39.html