Marketing Essay (My Homework)

This is some homework I turned in for my Start Up Now Class. Thought I'd leave it here also.

The Forces of Marketing and Impact on our Quality of Life.

Marketing has the capacity to have a tremendous effect on our quality of life in direct relation to how much we, as consumers allow it too. In

our daily lives we are consistently

bombarded with visual and verbal

stimulation, suggestions, jingles,

reviews on products we are led to

believe that we need in order to conduct our daily lives.

In reality many of these products are not needs and they may

not even be items we actually want, though we may choose to decide we want or need them based on the psychological

impact of marketing materials most people come in contact

with on a daily basis. A variety of mediums including television commercials, radio, youtube, facebook, billboard, and targetedemail advertisements are regularly inviting us to try something new, to buy this, eat that, go here, and improve our lives by

purchasing this now.

Many of these products may in fact improve our quality of life,

however in certain circumstances some may not. Is having the desire to pull into a fast food chain and have a big greasy

burger because your senses were recently stimulated with the

intention of creating that desire such a good thing for over all

well being? On the flip side maybe hearing a commercial

about a shoe sale is exactly what you needed to hear to tip the scales to invest the money on a new pair you’d already been

thinking of purchasing that will physically improve your life by

helping make your body more comfortable in the course of a

day.

Whether it marketing effects consumers positively or negativelydepends on multiple factors and each individuals factors are

different. Financial and emotional well being of individual

buyers has the capacity for a large impact on the out come of apurchase.

For financially well off individuals purchases based on

emotional choices and psychological effects of marketing are

not really that big a deal. In some cases the purchased item

may soon be thrown in a closet completely forgotten after

obtaining it.

For someone with less money an emotional purchase based onthe psychological effects of marketing, peer pressure, trying tokeep up with the Jones, and the like can have a long term

potentially devastating results like in not being able to meet

basic needs.

So as I am venturing into studying marketing I ask myself what

is my responsibility to the consumer? What am I actually trying to achieve by selling my product? Will it help or hinder my

consumer?

The reality is I can’t really know the answer to those questions, however from knowing a whole lot of financial stresses in my

life, some brought on by solely myself, some brought on by

choices of others I’ve had none or very little say in, I can say I

care about the consumer.

This is why, as an artist when I first began to consider putting aprice tag on my art as a way to meet my basic needs and

hopefully end my unemployment forever, it was and continues

to be extremely important to me that its available at a variety of price points As I know first hand how it is to have $5 be a big

difference in my daily life. It is also why when deciding to put a price tag on my art for sale I want it to be affordable to people, because art is not just for the rich, everyone should be able to own a few pretty things to brighten their day.