Advertisers do not persuade consumers: they create societies around their brands to maintain power in the marketplace

Many theories in advertising deal with the direct effects of advertising: advertising creates attitudes which lead to buying behaviour thus explaining market share.

Advertisers do not persuade consumers; they create societies around their brands to maintain power in the marketplace

Willem Verbeke

 

Many theories in advertising deal with the direct effects of advertising: advertising creates attitudes which lead to buying behaviour thus explaining market share. In this paper another viewpoint is generated: advertising co-ordinates the behaviours of the trade and the consumer at the same time, thus creating a self-organizing system (also called a society) around the brand. Because self-organizing systems are inherently dynamic it becomes difficult to maintain the stability within the system.

Internal processes need external criteria.

(L. Wittgenstein)...

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