Stuart Ewen on Advertising and Marketing

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In his book Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, Stuart Ewen accentuates the significance of using advertisements in order to influence consumers with references to advertisements’ effects on promoting.

The author concentrates on several influential aspects which can change the standard approaches to developing the progressive marketing strategies.

Thus, Ewen focuses on the necessity of influencing the consumers’ behavior with manipulating the notions of ‘human nature’ and ‘human instincts’, determining the consumers’ flexibility in relation to the advertisements provided.

Moreover, the author pays much attention to the rather provocative correlation between shortening working hours, increasing the wages, and changing the consumers’ behavior.

Although Ewen’s considerations are related to the situation in marketing and advertising during the beginning of the 20^th century, it is important to note that the main principles of advertising which are emphasized by the author are still actively used by marketers.

The dynamic development of the market depends on the tendencies and changes in the consumers’ purchasing behavior. To contribute to the market’s growth and products’ selling, it is necessary to make consumers purchase the definite products.

Advertising is the most general method to stimulate the certain consumers’ purchasing intentions. However, it is rather interesting that Ewen discusses the alternative variant to solve the problem.

Ewen states that it is essential for companies to create new markets and attract potential consumers, and this process may involve providing their employees with the purchasing power.

Thus, the author focuses on the connection between shortening working hours, increasing the wages, and changing the consumers’ behavior. Ewen accentuates, “now priorities demanded that the worker spend his wages and leisure time on the consumer market” (Ewen, 2001, p. 29).

It is possible to agree with this conclusion, referring to the situations in which people go shopping because the growth of the purchasing activity can be observed during weekends, and effective advertisements can stimulate the process.

The main task of advertising is to draw the audience’s attention to the definite product and make people purchase it. Advertising involves presenting a product to potential consumers in such a way that an advertisement could convince them to change the intentions and purchase the product.

Ewen states that marketers discuss consumers and their intentions as flexible as ‘raw materials’ are. Thus, “they both would have to be shaped by the demands of the production line, pecuniary interests, and the newly emergent managerial tools of capital” (Ewen, 2001, p. 26).

From this point, advertisements are oriented to creating a certain need which develops in the mind of a consumer, and he or she understands that this need can be satisfied only by purchasing the product.

That is why, the reader agrees that an advertisement should convince a potential consumer to purchase a particular product because it can help satisfy his personal and social needs.

It is relevant for the situations when consumers feel positive emotions after buying an expensive car not because of its high technical characteristics, but because of the status and prestige on which it was accentuated in advertisements.

A potential customer is inclined to purchase the product to feel the similar emotions as the persons depicted in advertisements and satisfy the need.

Thus, it is important to concentrate on human instincts which are actively manipulated by marketers and advertisers to form the definite purchasing behavior.

Ewen claims that proper advertisement which involves a presentation of the product in a certain scientific manner can actually convince a potential consumer to purchase the product.

Ewen accentuates that the traditional opinion that consumers made their purchasing decision orienting to the mechanical quality of a product is no longer valid, particularly in an industry that is involved in mass production.

Therefore, “the utilitarian value of a product or the traditional notion of mechanical quality were no longer sufficient inducements to move merchandise at the necessary rate and volume required by mass production” (Ewen, 2001, p. 34).

Manufacturing companies do not rely on the quality of the product to guarantee its demand and sale rate in the market to match that definite production rate.

On the one hand, the reader can agree with the author in relation to the importance of such factors as human instincts to influence the customers’ purchasing behavior.

On the other hand, it is impossible to discuss the convincing advertisement oriented to the consumers’ expectations as the effective way to promote the product of a low quality.

However, Ewen proposes the other variant of discussing the problem, basing on the idea of human instincts. Rather than trying to justify the worthiness of a product in regard to its quality and value, Ewen claims that it is more effective to convince consumers in the possibility of satisfaction derived from accessing the definite product.

From this point, the advertising copy of the familiar product which appeals to the consumers’ instincts, expectations, and interests can be sold more successfully than the other products with the same characteristics.

In spite of the fact Ewen’s conclusions are based on the industries of the 1920s, his arguments can be discussed as still appropriate for analyzing the modern advertising trends.

Reference

Ewen, S. (2001). Captains Of Consciousness Advertising And The Social Roots Of The Consumer Culture. USA: Basic Books.

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Stuart Ewen on Advertising and Marketing

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