Very few disciplines possess as much knowledge about society, groups, people, and their associated behaviors. Sure, psychology looks at the individual; sociology thinks about groups; economics has econometrics (simultaneous equations). Only marketing brings these three concepts to one place.
What do we do with all this knowledge? Try to sell more stuff to the same set of consumers. Try to sell stuff to new consumers.
Shouldn’t we do more with our knowledge? Don’t we owe to society to share our knowledge in order to make our society a better place?
In the lower right hand corner, you will see a new tag. Say hello to the social tag. You will see more of it in the coming weeks.
15 responses so far ↓
patrickm2 // February 19, 2007 at 2:56 pm |
Yes, we should do more with this knowledge. Unfortunately, the United States has become a culture based on specialization and bottom line profits. College, the pinnacle of our education system, teaches us to specialize by selecting a single major. How are the future C.E.O.’s of America suppose to understand global social issue when they majored in finance? It’s great to be able to create a balance sheet but it’s worthless when dealing with the broader issues like globalization. I am personal advocate for more “well-rounded” education and that is one of the reasons I love marketing classes. It’s incorporates the human aspect that is sometimes missing in the Financial Statements. So yeah, long story short I believe we should put more emphasis on marketing.
maryc1 // February 21, 2007 at 12:10 pm |
I agree marketers should do more with the knowledge they posses about consumers. Marketers would be able to do many things to help society such as place ads that they know will benefit the environment or help a natural disaster. They have the knowledge to know where and when these ads should be placed in order to be the most effective and reach the most people. However doing these public service announcements or good deeds don’t usually come with any sort of paycheck so they are not often done. Basically marketers are smart and they know that in order to make money the need to sell something not just an idea to make society a better place.
kkovacic // February 21, 2007 at 12:56 pm |
I think we should definitely do more about our knowledge. I believe that many times we put emphasis on things that don’t or at least will not matter later on in our lives. The fact is that people are too narrow-minded and do not have enough of general knowledge. I think people are too self-centered. Vast majority of students have no idea of what is going on in the world. As a matter of fact a lot of them couldn’t even locate a European country on the map.
I think we should teach about things that are more practical. We need to learn how to use the knowledge that we have in most beneficial way.
The fact that marketers have so much knowledge about consumer behavior- why people behave a certain way, why do they purchase, make decisions… Why don’t we use that to somehow benefit the environment? We hear about so many environmental problems- pollution, cutting down so many trees… and we know there are alternatives out there, but at the same time we are also willing to sit back and destroy the environment simply because it is profitable.
chrisc2 // February 22, 2007 at 2:53 am |
I definitely think we should share the knowledge, but how? At this point of civilization there is so much knowledge circulating that we as Marketers would spend a majority of our life just trying to read through it all; and we would probably not even make it through all of it since new information would be coming in even faster than we could learn it. One company that is trying assist with this problem is GOOGLE. One part GOOGLE is taking is digitizing encyclopedias, magazines and other reading material in order to locate the information you are looking for in a fraction of the time. By making information more easily accessible we will be allowing marketers, companies, and society to learn old information faster while still staying current on new and innovative ways of doing business.
rachelh1 // February 26, 2007 at 3:54 pm |
This is the main problem I have recognized after beginning my marketing classes. The whole point of marketing does not better society despite the potential it has, especially in marketing research. I have decided to double major in finance as well, just because I cannot stand marketing and its goals. There is a true wealth of knowledge that marketers posses and I don’t know if it is greed or the fact that there is no obvious benefit to marketers or profitability for sharing this knowledge. Whenever I go to buy shampoo, face wash, or detergent, I have to put so much more thought into my purchase; does it work or are they trying to trick me, have they already? Marketing is just about getting people to buy what you sell, not providing information. Therefore, I cannot see how marketers would ever share their knowledge as it doesn’t provide any profitability.
rachelc1 // February 26, 2007 at 9:20 pm |
I agree with Patrickmz that college pushes students to specialize in one particular subject. However, many individuals are good at various things. Colleges do not give individuals the opportunity to express themselves in all the areas they are truly talented. I think that degrees and grades define a student to much and do not represent his or her true talents. I love science, but ironically I am a business major. It is true that I could double major, but I feel that then I would be in school for the rest of my life. One thing that I think Texas Tech encourages is taking honor classes. I think that honor classes are so beneficial to the students in various ways. Honors classes are small and they focus the majority of the class time on discussions. I love group discussions because discussions allow you to share your knowledge. In addition, discussions allow your peers to comment and provide you with feedback. I think that listening to group discussions also exposes you to hearing topics repeated numerous times. I benefit alot from repetition, because it helps me remember the topics discussed in detail. I believe that knowledge shared between students is so important because it allows you to agree and have debates over personal ideas. I also agree with Maryc1 that marketers could share so much more knowledge with people if they made a true effort. I wish I was exposed to more ads on television that focus on saving the wildlife and environment. Pollution is causing are environment to deteriorate and marketers could help notify the world. Marketers have the advantage to share knowledge and reach people all around the world. I think that marketers forget what an impact they can have on people and how they can help begin to solve many issues through expressing knowledge.
taylorj2 // February 27, 2007 at 10:46 pm |
Marketers should most definitely do more with their knowledge. I changed my major to Marketing before my senior year, and there have been several times where I have resented everything that marketing/marketing research stands for. I have an entire class based on the research that every human absolutely HATES(surveys, etc.). Is it really that important to teach us how to do something that we know will annoy people? If we’re going to gather all of this information to learn about people’s tendencies, why use it solely to learn how to sell to them? Why not study their tendencies to help solve social problems such as racial discrimination? Everyone speaks of it like they think it’s important, but they would rather focus on making a sale and keeping their jobs. I would much rather see people focusing on fixing problems than be bombarded with 50 different choices when I buy toothpaste because a group of marketers found that people like options. This sounds very cynical, but keep in mind that it wouldn’t take a lot of effort to get marketers to do better things. Market experts already have information that could be used to help society, so it would be tough for them to deny the opportunity if presented.
robertc1 // February 28, 2007 at 12:24 am |
With all this knowledge, I in the future as a skilled marketer will try to do both: sell more stuff to the same set of consumers and try to sell stuff to new consumers.
As a skilled marketer, I agree with the above posters to an extent. We should do more with our knowledge. We should try to follow the common good as well as to make a buck. We do owe our society, to share our knowledge in order to make our society a better place. I believe that as a human being we should do everything in our power to improve the human condition. Also while doing that one might try to do some creative marketing.
kyleb2 // February 28, 2007 at 5:59 pm |
This topic can be very complex depending on how beneficial the market knowledge would help us. Marketing research collaborates almost every aspect of society to understand how they should sell their products, but I don’t necessarily believe they should share all of their information with us. Just because marketing understands how we function and live as humans, doesn’t mean that their information could help us. People live their lives no matter how someone classifies them. For marketing to sell new products to us, they need to let us live our lives. By doing that marketers can follow new trends and create new products for consumers.
jessicac2 // February 28, 2007 at 11:21 pm |
I do also believe that we, as marketers, should use our knowledge and understanding for the betterment of society. The sad part is that most of us won’t. We want the money, success, and prestige. In order to facilitate the general public with our skills, takes our time and effort. So I would propose that on top of our careers, joining in a non-profit organization’s efforts to create a better nation and world could make all the difference. Being able to assist associations, with their cause, by using our education and expertise, would improve that one organization, which in turn would improve our civilization. If each of us put a little extra time and talent into something outside our day-to-day jobs, we would get astounding results. I know that the only way we’ll ever see our world make a change, will be because the educated community will take up the mission and challenge the world to become unique and superior. These people will lead the way with their ideas and how to execute those ideas, and marketers are a huge part of this cause. If we sit by once we’re out of college and loose the ambition and drive to use our background to improve the society, then this chance to make the difference that we’re talking about now, will pass us by.
erich1 // March 1, 2007 at 12:38 pm |
I am a management major and this is my first dive into the world of marketing. I feel like the marketing world has a lot of various aspects that are simply ways of finding loopholes while maintaining its manipulative status. There are many aspects however that are not only interesting, but useful. Understanding a persons behavior can open up limitless opportunities as far as gaining and retaining customers. Outside of the business world even, we can better learn to understand and cooperate despite differences. I’m not saying marketing will lead to world peace, but given you can understand someone’s motivations and attitudes, we can learn easier ways to work together and help one another whether it be a simple everyday chore or a working business environment.
codyh2 // March 1, 2007 at 9:39 pm |
I believe that as marketers, or thats what we intend to be, we should provide our knowledge to a greater scale than say an economist or a psycologist, but I think for an example how we can do this is by marketing our knowledge to businesses and individuals as well by saying how we believe that our concepts and strategies work better than other professions mentioned above.
nicoshas1 // March 1, 2007 at 11:19 pm |
Marketers should do more with their knowledge, but at the same time the use of pyschology should not use the understanding of the mind to manipulate people. So yes, marketers should and could use their information to make society a better place, but because we live in the US, its not an issue that is being recognized as something that needs to be addressed. Currently marketing is a form of business, and because it does not break any sort of law its ok. I agree with other blogs that this info should be used for things like ads that promote the environment, or social issues. I believe that this issue will eventually become a national focal point because of the increasing emphasis being placed on ethics in business. Yes marketing should use its information for social issues and the benefit of society, but I must also argue that not everything business is perfect. The US promotes freedom, and and until we reach that point that social responisibility is a prioirty over individual wellbeing and freedom of business within reasoning, marketers have no obligation to step outside its norms.Whether or not we as a society push for this or whether or not marketers step outside thier norms is something we will have to wait and see.
jvasquez2 // March 2, 2007 at 2:05 pm |
I believe that marketers know more than nwe could ever know about ourselves when it comes to consumer behavior, they have many tools to help assess everything that goes on in the consumer world. The problem lies in that for them to implement new ideas with the knowledge they possess is it tends to be very costly. there is no way to target only one segment at a time in most cases. There are some instances where you can. But with trends changing the way they do, all the time, by the time someone figures out the trend and implements new strategy to target it, the trend has modified or changed completely , leaving only the laggers behind.
lynng2 // March 5, 2007 at 1:17 am |
I’m afraid I disagree with many people who posted. I hate to sound cold-hearted, and I don’t think I am. But MARKETers study MARKETing to MARKET products. I think all people should understand that if we help people, then life will be better (for ourselves and the people we help). But using marketing skills to market products is not wrong. But living your entire life to market products might be. If you are a marketing manager, then market your products. If you do social work, the do social work. If you can do both, then do both. I don’t think Marketers have some secret advantage over other people (like those who help the homeless or work for nonprofit organizaitons). Maybe social workers should study aspects of marketing and maybe marketers should do service work in order to balance their lives. One aspect I agree with everyone is that the study of any type of business is essentially the study of profit. The bottom line is all that matters. This is a sad way to live. I firmly believe that people are much more important to money, but taking care of people in your business (employees) is expensive and taking care of people outside of business (family, friends, etc) takes time. Money of course takes away from profit and time takes away from your devotion to the office. Of course, I don’t have a solution for this. If I’m being honest, I would say I care about profit too. If I am a manager, I want to see an employee do what it takes to grow the business. I would reward that kind of behavior because it’s good for the company. But if I’m at church I would praise the man who takes time off to spend with his family. How do I balance doing what’s right for the company/getting ahead/doing a great job/wanting to get promoted with doing the right thing for family/friends/my personal life/my spiritual life? This is a conflict I have thought about before. How do I get promoted? Do I edge myself ahead of my peers while possibly pushing them down or do I work with integrity and give others the credit they deserve? Perhaps I’m getting too personal, haha.
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