Naheel Jawaid's Blog

At an IB Club meeting today, I ended up talking to a 2nd year student while chowing down on their free wings (If you are a Sauder student reading this, go to their events… you will not regret it). The conversation got onto the topic of marketing and the person I was talking to (his name was Chris or Greg or something, I swear) had the view that marketing was evil and manipulative. I disagreed, stating that good marketing often leads people to “feel” they are better off, regardless of reality, and that that was most important.

I read a post today on the Influential Marketing Blog.

One of the coolest things about Marketing is changing perceptions through the most subtle changes. This blog post was eyeopening.

The blog talks about how consumers have no real grasp of what something should be worth, and are heavily influenced by comparing the price of one good to the price of another to see if they are getting a good deal.

This brought up the issue once again in my mind, as although someone like Chris (or Greg…?) might see this as manipulative, I believe the use of behavioral psychology in this concept is genius.