When I think about marketing I generally think about it in the context of businesses. However, the Canadian Wheat Board is an interesting example of a marketing agency. It had a monopsony (a single buyer) over the wheat and barley produced in select provinces. It was in charge of marketing these products to consumers in order to get the producer’s the best price. This basically meant that the farmers did not have to worry about marketing their own product, but that also meant that they could not determine their own prices.
I believe a consumer bases their purchases off of two things:
(1) How the product appeals to them
(2) The price of the product relative to the value
By having the board, the farmers gave up the ability to influence both of these (keep in mind that the board was funded by the farmers and subsidized by the gov). If you think about this, a producer is a lot less competitive if they don’t make decisions about these two aspects. For this reason, the monopsony power was recently evoked because farmers no longer wanted to give all of this power to the board. Now that farmers have the ability to choose if they want to use the board, we may see different advertisements for wheat and barley.
Farmer’s are going to get creative.
Check out a news article here!