Apparently. Companies don’t manufacture demand, they manufacture products that fulfill demand (or don’t, in which case the company in question goes out of business). I suppose where we are getting hung up on things is in the definition of ‘manufactured demand’. To me, ‘manufacturing demand’ has connotations of government regulation or some other artificial action that forces people to buy something because they have no other choice (say, a real monopoly). For instance, if tomorrow the government came out and said that you could no longer buy a gasoline powered car, but instead you MUST buy an electric vehicle, then this would, IMHO, be ‘manufactured demand’. Why? Because without the government intervention and new regulation people probably wouldn’t be going out in large numbers to buy electric vehicles.
Contrast that to the Ipod craze. Apple didn’t go out and force people to buy an Ipod. Instead, they created a product, marketed it, and then let the market decide if they wanted it or if they wanted some other, competing product. They didn’t ‘manufacture demand’, they manufactured a product that CREATED demand simply by being popular. No one was forced or coerced in any way to buy an Ipod, and Ipods weren’t the only product out there that could fulfill the niche it was in.
Never said they were passive observers. The difference is between invention and marketing a product that becomes popular and creating an artificial market where people HAVE to buy something because they have no other choice. At least, that’s how I see it. YMMV, I suppose.
Oh, I agree. That’s why I mentioned monopolies, of which I believe DeBeers is one of the best examples.
Certainly, but it doesn’t go as far nor is it as effective as government regulation. You can tell people they absolutely have to go get an Ipod or they will die horribly, but that is only going to go so far and for so long. But if you regulate things such that they HAVE to go out and buy an Ipod or they will go to jail, then you have truly ‘created demand’.
First of all who gives a flying fuck about Rubiks cubes? What is our landfills and waterways overflowing with millions of discarded Rubiks cubes from the 80s?
Are our lakes contaminated with the toxic liquid used to fill Magic 8 Balls?
How would you like it if we banned the plastic used to make frisbees and bong tubes?
I think that even if we don’t take the OP to an extreme, he is still making the mistake of thinking that we can eliminate one set of “things” and that everything else will remain as is, or will not be adversely impacted. Let’s just eliminate all the “bad” stuff, and keep all the “good” stuff.
Within the context of a discussion of advertising, I think that nobody else uses the term ‘manufactured demand’ the way you do. Suppose I don’t know about an ipod. Due to my ignorance, I have no demand for it. Then there’s a short boring press release about the new ipod, which informs me of its existence, but doesn’t convince me to spend money on it. My demand may be raised somewhat, but not much (call this ‘raise 1’). Then Apple deluges me with commercials showing me how owning an ipod will turn me into a black silhouette, which will both make me extremely cool and irresistibly attractive to women. Convinced that this is true, my demand skyrockets and I buy three ipods, because enough is never enough. (Call this ‘raise 2’.)
I started out with no demand, and the demand was raised twice through the actions of the company. I believe that these raises in demand are generally known as ‘manufactured demand’ - I think both, but certainly raise 2, as it is perceived as being over and above the level of demand inspired by mere awareness of the options.
You can’t handwave away the impact of the over-consuming world we live in by focusing on who gets to decide what is good stuff and what is bad stuff and implying a fascist state when anyone tries to put the brakes on our idiotic, short-sighted consumption habits.
I’m not sure why but I have this overwhelming desire to buy an ipad to use as a serving tray in my car for McDonalds frappes. It has to be the advertising. Must… resist … manufactured… demand.
Maybe when the government gets finished telling us what we can’t eat they can tell us what we can’t buy.
Nobody is hand-waving more than you. You’ve yet to even define manufactured demand, much less demonstrate how all advertisement is the cause of it. You’ve also failed to even mention why we need to “put the brakes on our idiotic, short-sighted consumption habits”, or even present a reasonable idea of how that could even be accomplished. On top of that, the one solution you’ve proposed would violate one of the cornerstones of our system of government.
It’s a bit much to suggest that other people in this thread are the ones who are hand-waving.
Then presumably you have the mindset of ‘Please, tell ME what to do!’, right? If that’s the case, then who do you think should tell you what you should do? Anyone, or some selective group?
Right, in the same way it’s especially true that you don’t want cops busting in and randomly ransacking your house if you happen to have a huge stash of cocaine in your basement. However despite your attempted well-poisoning, sometimes bad ideas are still bad even if bad people also don’t like them; this doesn’t mean that everyone who doesn’t like the bad idea is Hitler.
I still think my example of DeBeers is a good one. An entire artificial “tradition” of diamond wedding and engagement rings created to sell artificially overpriced diamonds.
Greater reliance on recycling, more durable products. Regulations or some sort of tax break or other incentives to encourage the latter; capitalism perversely encourages flimsy products because replacing them profits the sellers. As for why; we live in a limited world and are using up resources faster that we are replenishing/recycling them. And the rest of the world is hardly going to willingly let us hog so great a percentage of the world’s resources.