The Power of Advertising

ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE: People (usually) respond to incentives in predictable ways.

Source:http://www.magolnick.com/

THESIS People usually respond to incentives in predictable ways, and because of this, advertising targets consumers based on cultural standards, beauty expectations, and consumer habits.

SYNTHESIS PARAGRAPH:

When I was doing my research over the past three months, I discovered that advertising doesn’t always strive to reflect reality. Instead, it strives to reflect all that consumers do not have, but want. An example of this comes from food photography, where advertisers are required to use real food, but they spend hours trying to make the most perfect and appealing item to photograph. By using this heavenly looking food as a visual stimulus, people are incentivized to purchase the food. However, advertising does more than just appeal to our biological needs. They also target and solidify our cultural beauty standards. In advertisements for clothes and beauty products, images of women are photoshopped so that they fit a beauty standard that is nearly impossible for the average woman to achieve. Young females who are self conscious about themselves respond to these advertisements by purchasing these products in an attempt to achieve the ideal body type. Some agencies, such as the American Medical Association, are claiming that photoshopping images is detrimental to the mental health of young women, and can even cause eating disorders. This shows the immense potential for power that images in advertising have over the human mind.  As we begin to understand the human brain better, we learn what kind of advertisements we biologically respond to, and how we can alter advertisements to become more effective, so that consumers brains are chemically driven to respond to incentives. You can read more about the research and theories about the psychology of advertising here. We already live in a world filled with advertisements, on our highways, our TVs, and our magazines. Ads target our values to incentivize us to buy products, and their amazing success means that going into the future, they’ll only become more prevalent and influential as they are combined with science.