Everyday we hear about "scientific studies" being done that cost thousands and sometimes millions of dollars. In the end, they come up with the result that anyone with any common sense could have figured out. Now, this study comes out to tell us something everyone has known for decades: Sex Sells! Whether it is Danica getting men to visit godaddy.com or a "tall, dark, and handsome male" attempting to get lonely women to join a dating site. All I can think about is, "wasn't there a better way to spend money on research?" I admit, I have made purchases that I thought would help me be more attractive to the opposite sex, but I wouldn't call that brandwashing, I would call it a natural instinct!
The article also mentions how an Apple may be advertised as fresh but may possibly be 14 months old. I once read an article that stated that apples are sprayed with a solution that makes the apple smell fresh when in reality it is not. This is false advertisement but the company selling apples still gets you to purchase the product. We as humans believe everything that we see and read and we need to stop that because as we see in the media, a lot of it is twisted to draw our attention to the advertisement.
Also, Ebay users trick the human brain by saying that with multiple purchases comes lower shipping rates. Thus, meaning that the seller makes more money and only has to ship one package, making the shipment price lower. The personal making the purchase does not necessarily take this into account. People automatically think, "lower shipping therefore, I can buy more!"
This article can be found at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=mind-reviews-brandwashed&WT.mc_id=SA_sharetool_Facebook
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With "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" just recently concluding, most people are probably aware of the multitude of advertising tactics that are used by retailers. In "Making Ads That Whisper to the Brain" posted in the New York Times, Natasha Singer presents the new age revolution of neuromarketing that has evolved in all areas of our lives, including big business and political campaigns. In regard to "brandwashing" the use of the word "trick" might be insufficent in describing what is truly going on. As Singer's New York Times article shows, advertisers spend large sums of money to not deceive the customer, but attempt to appeal to the consumers most inner desires. Many people claim that these techniques bypass the rational defenses that we as humans have and therefore should not be aloud as ethical advertising. Other supporters of the techniques stand by the fact that these methods are only meant to attract your attention, and in no way make it possible for companies to make you buy a product. Although these techniques are highly debated, it does not appear that companies are attempting to "trick" people but more likely attempting to entice them. Wether one supports or does not approve of the techniques, it seems that businesses find them worth their time and money, finding that consumers respond to them, and as a result will be used for years to come.
ReplyDeleteI think that this tendency of ours to make irrational decisions when shopping have to do with certain heuristics when trying to come to a quick decisions; usually when people are shopping they are under stress (whether it be temporal or environmental) which means they are more likely to result to a heuristic to come to a decisions, which is not always the best one. You are correct in thinking that these choices are "natural"; we have all learned over time "shortcuts" to make decisions, and we simply use these shortcuts when we are shopping. Once people become more aware of their irrational decisions and why they have come to those decisions we will be able to combat these consumer mistakes
ReplyDeleteThis digs deep into our brain bugs. As we recently learned in class, there are two systems that go into decision making, and Dean Buonomano also mentions this as a brain bug. Humans do not quite have the ability to reason before acting out their impulse. These impulses cause us to buy things we may not need simply because they draw our attention to things like sex and one day specials that we feel we need to nab the deal before it goes away. People need to start making thoroughly thought out decisions when it comes to buying items, or we will be sucked into whatever is the "newest thing" whether we need it or not.
ReplyDeleteThey were really washing their brand of apples with chemicals wow that is intense. I think what I have learned the most about in this class is all of the ways our cognition can fail us. It is just so clear that all of our faculties were made for a time that we don't live in, a society we don't live in. We live in a society that is filled with media and advertising that hijacks our brains and tries to control the way we perceive the world. It works too.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that they can make a 14-month old apple look "fresh" is absolutely disgusting. That also reminds me of how McDonald's fries can look exactly the same for months and months and we wouldn't even know the difference. Big businesses don't care how good their product is. They just want to sell it. And they use our "brain bugs" in order to manipulate us into buying their products. It just goes to show how money-driven our society is.
ReplyDeleteI feel like all of this also ties in with the framing bias because the way that stores present their deals on black friday and cyber monday, really make it seem like you're saving money. But in reality the stores just mark up the prices before the sale, so it comes out to be even with the discount or you end up buying more because you feel like you're saving a lot of money. Also, people get caught up with all the sales ads bombarding us every minute around the holidays, and it definitely influences our spending habits.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of advertisement and neuroscience, I think of a term I recently came across, "neurophilia." My understanding of neurophilia is that it describes a contemporary, irrational phenomenon of consumers' obsession with neuroscience in advertisements. Looking forward to taking Dr. J.D. Trout's "Judgment and Decision-making" class next semester, I stumbled on one of his articles that explores just this. Below is a shortened abstract of one of his papers...I thought I'd share it with you all.
ReplyDeleteTrout, J.D. 2008. Seduction without cause: uncovering explanatory neurophilia. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(8), 281-82.
"Credibility is a cherished currency in science, but its cues can be counterfeit. A novel series of experiments...show that non-expert con- sumers...assign greater standing to explanations that contain neuroscientific details, even if these details provide no additional explanatory value. ...This ‘placebic’ information might play [a role] in producing a potentially misleading sense of intellectual fluency and, consequently, an unreliable sense of understanding."
This article just shows that there are people getting paid to research how to sell products and make people waste their money on items they may never use let alone need. In America we are raised to be consumers. Babies are born into Disney show "blankies," wear diapers of a certain brand, and as we grow older we are pressured into staying trendy by spending exuberant amounts of money on name brands. It's a never ending cycle and the unbelievable part of it is that it's heavily due to these researcher that study ways to convince our minds that we "need" certain products.
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