ali birston's blog

Although there are many things that influence consumer behaviour these days, I’d still have to say that advertising plays a huge role in what we choose to purchase. However, what if the ads that are influencing our decisions are leading us to believe things that aren’t true? The fact of the matter is, you’d feel pretty disappointed and completely jipped if the product you purchased did not live up to the promises and expectations created by the ad.

A recent post on Seth Godin’s Blog titled “Raising Expectations (and then dashing them)” discusses this idea and goes on to further explain how this type of marketing strategy can actually be damaging for a company in the long run.

As an example, say you see an ad on TV promoting Wal-Mart. The image that they portray is that all of their employees are overly friendly and willing to help and that they provide the lowest prices around. If you were to go into Wal-Mart the next day only to find that their prices were excessive and their employees were grumpy, you would surely be disappointed, and as Seth rightly points out, maybe even more disappointed than if you had walked in with no prior expectations.

Although we want to believe that a company will live up to the expectations that its ads create and may initially give it a try because of them, if it doesn’t meet or exceed those expectations, there is no way that we are going to become loyal customers or even customers of that particular brand at all.

So if this type of marketing strategy is ultimately decreasing user satisfaction and creating disappointment among consumers, why do companies continue to use it? I completely agree with Seth’s suggestion that it is much better to put your money to good use to embrace and satisfy the customers you already have rather than spend it on trying to attract new customers if you are only going to let them down.