The Illusory Power Of Marketing

Marketing is integral to facilitating consumerism, for people cannot just know by self-evident necessity or by pure logical deduction what products are available and what their features, logistical accessibility, and prices are.  It is of course possible for even capitalist marketing to not have the goal of inspiring consumeristic tendencies, the emotionalistic or blind slavery to constantly purchasing new products and services just to fit in with pointless social trends or out of belief in materialism.  Still, without marketing of some kind, mass consumerism could never seize a region, a country, or the world, and marketing is a major part of technology-fortified business practices under American capitalism.  Marketing is the catalyst of consumerism--and yet its power is much more limited than some would think.

Not all marketing, though, is necessarily about getting people to immediately buy something--or to prompt them to eventually buy something at all.  To intentionally buy a particular product, people have to look for it, and this involves a minimal level of familiarity with a brand, even if only noticing that the brand is there as an option.  As for marketing that is not about selling something, hiring advertisements are still a sort of marketing, though they are not perfectly identical in function to what most people mean by general marketing; it is a job opening instead of a product or service getting promoted.  Some marketing might also be aimed at convincing people to engage in "micro conversions," or action steps that might or probably will lead to a purchase (the "macro conversion"), but are not a sale, such as following a company's social media page or adding an item to an online shopping cart.

In fact, micro conversions are voluntary.  The kind of marketing that can lead to this has no power except in some cases what people allow it to have over them.  In other words, its power is illusory.  No matter how subjectively enticing it might be, no one succumbs to it except by choice.  No one acts upon it because the advertisement forced them to make a purchase or a decision that could bring them closer to a purchase.  It is entirely possible for even people who are very interested in a marketed product or service to restrain their actions and rationalistically remind themselves of higher priorities that demand their immediate attention.  Consumerism has its significant epistemological and moral flaws, but one of its problem is not that of having power over people's actions unless they allow it to, and that "control" can be identified, understood, and resisted at any point in a consumer's life.

There can also be consumers who would have already wanted to purchase or look into whatever it is that an advertisement is promoting, having a predetermined or natural interest in the object of the promotion that exists before the marketing that is meant to prompt this is even noticed.  They already are exercising their capacity for autonomy when it comes to understanding what they actually want out of purchases and are not swayed emotionalistically by a billboard, email, or salesperson to buy some luxury item they do not have the money for or some personally affordable item that they do not truly desire.  It does not matter what other people do.  They do not base their personal financial choices on blindly partaking in trends no matter how prominent marketing is, and they might not rush to make a purchase in spite of relevant, appealing marketing.

Encountering marketing does not force someone to spend any amount of money, much less to become slaves to consumeristic ideas that some businesses would love for their customers to hold to.  Deceptive marketing is problematic, as is marketing created with the intent of ensnaring the poor or the consumeristic into needlessly parting with their money.  Even when it comes to outright deceptions or what was supposed to be an emotionalistic snare in promotional material, the illusory power of marketing is not something that people have to yield to.  American capitalism's multiple significant problems do not include the impossibility of marketing literally holding people as psychological hostages to their own overpowering whims even if they feel manipulated.