Michael Schudson - Product Quotes

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The effectiveness of advertising depends on the amount and kind of product information available to consumers.... advertising will be more successful the more impoverished the consumer's information environment.

Michael Schudson
Even if, as is generally the case, everything that the ad says about the product is scrupulously honest, or at any rate scrupulously avoids outright dishonesty, the implication of the direct address of most commercials - that the announcer speaks with the viewer's welfare at heart - is fraudulent.

Michael Schudson
Advertising may make people believe they are inadequate without Product X and that Product X will satisfactorily manage their inadequacies. More likely, it may remind them of inadequacies they have already felt and may lead them, once at least, to try a new product that just might help, even though they are well aware that it probably will not.

Michael Schudson
The advertising agencies and the media can argue the point either way. If they are trying to convince an advertiser to increase the media budget, they can cite examples of devastatingly successful advertising campaigns. But if they are defending themselves before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or a civic organization decrying television advertising to children, they trot out the data that demonstrate that advertising has slight or no effect on product sales.

Michael Schudson
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.

Michael Schudson