Guest editorial: Persuasion and marketing

✍ Scribed by Thomas F. Stafford

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 55 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0742-6046
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6793(199903)16:2<87::aid-mar1>3.0.co;2-i

✦ Synopsis

Persuasion goes to the very heart of marketing as a technology and a science. Scientifically speaking, persuasion is the best application of consumer psychology to motivate customers to engage in exchanges with companies. As a technique, persuasion is highly studied and assiduously applied to the same end.

Modern marketing came to be when the industrial revolution succeeded in achieving production levels that outstripped local consumptive demand for manufacturing output. Although the practice of distribution blossomed in this period, companies also felt compelled to sell more productively than their competitors in order to divest themselves of the extra productive output engendered by manufacturing efficiencies.

It could be argued that the persuasive art is specific to the selling concept and not to the marketing concept practiced in the modern age. This may be so, but as has been noted by sages past, "Nothing happens until somebody sells something." It has also been said that, "When you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door," but many mousetrap manufacturers have failed on this premise. A marketplace that relied exclusively upon the efficient production of benefitladen offerings to attract customers would not be as rich as the one customers currently enjoy. Competition tends to force the improvement of offerings, but a competitive marketplace also tends to imply that some companies will not fare as well as others. Companies that desire to fare better rather than worse generally tend to find ways to persuade customers to seek their offerings rather than those of the competition, hence the continued importance of persuasion in the practice of marketing.