Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Marketing research: Marketing research in economics involves systematically collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data about markets, consumer behavior, and competition. It helps businesses identify opportunities, evaluate product demand, and develop effective strategies. This process informs decision-making, reduces uncertainty, and enhances resource allocation to meet consumer needs efficiently. See also efficiency, Competition, Market, Consumption._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Murray N. Rothbard on Marketing Research - Dictionary of Arguments
Rothbard III 979 Marketing research/Rothbard: Advertising/Galbraith: Thesis: (…) wants, (…) are not real or genuine ones; they have been "created" in the populace by advertisers, and their wicked clients, the producing businessmen. The very fact of production, through such advertising, "creates" the supposed wants that it supplies. Rothbard: Galbraith's entire theory of excess affluence rests on this flimsy assertion that consumer wants are artificially created by business itself. >Advertising/Galbraith. Marketing research/RothbardVsGalbraith: Indeed, our view is the only one that makes sense of the increasingly large quantities of money spent by business on marketing research. Why bother investigating in detail what consumers really want, if all one need do is to create the wants for them by advertising? If, in fact, production really created its own demand through advertising, as Galbraith maintains, business would never again have to worry about losses or bankruptcy or a failure to sell automatically any good that it may arbitrarily choose to produce. Certainly there would be no need for marketing research or for any wondering about what consumers will buy. This image of the world is precisely the reverse of what is occurring. Indeed, precisely because people's standards of living are moving ever farther past the subsistence line, businessmen are worrying ever more intensely about what consumers want and what they will buy. It is because the range of goods available to the consumers is expanding so much beyond simple staples needed for subsistence, in quantity, quality, and breadth of product substitutes, that businessmen must compete as never before in paying court to the consumer, in trying to obtain his attention: in Short, in advertising. Increasing advertising is a function of the increasingly effective range of competition for the consumer's favor.(1),(2) 1. Recent writings by marketing experts on "the marketing revolution" now under way stress precisely this increasing competition for, and courting of, the favor and custom of the consumer. Thus, see Robert J. Keith, "The Marketing Revolution," Journal of Marketing, January, 1960, pp. 35-38; Goldman, "Product Differentiation and Advertising: Some Lessons From Soviet Experience," and Goldman, "Marketing—a Lesson for Marx," Harvard Business Review, January-February, 1960, pp. 79-86. 2. On the alleged powers of business advertising, it is well to note these pungent comments of Ludwig von Mises: „It is a widespread fallacy that skillful advertising can talk the consumers into buying everything that the advertiser wants them to buy.... However, nobody believes that any kind of advertising would have succeeded in making the candlemakers hold the field against the electric bulb, the horse-drivers against the motorcars, the goose quill against the steel pen and later against the fountain pen.“ (Mises, Human Action, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949. Reprinted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998. p. 317)_____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
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