Michael Schudson Quote

It is entirely plausible... that advertising helps sell goods even if it never persuades a consumer of anything. So long as investers, salespeople, and retailers believe advertising affects consumers, advertising will influence product availability and this, by itself, shapes consumer choice. Availability, as marketers sometimes say, equals sales. Advertising may be an important signal system within the business world." "Despite efforts at 'psychographics' which, here and there, have proved useful guides for advertising, the most consistently used and efficient criteria for describing consumers are the most psychologically blunt — demographics.... It is the most consistently employed kind of data in advertising work.

Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society, 1984