But these states - transience and impermance - are useful to market making. In my parable about Eliza the Flower Seller I observed that her buyers, the ones with pain or need and coin, include business owners who want to make a certain impression. The less permanent the product, the more frequently the need to purchase, the better for Eliza.
In my post on DNA and Death yesterday at http://ruffsonlife.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-two-recent-health-headlines.html I suggested that advertising and the consumer economy have created a false sense of want. And in http://ruffsonlife.blogspot.com/2011/05/split-personality.html I commented on the different and incomplete faces we present to the world. Reconciling market making as I define it and the pernicious nature of acting on - activating - manipulating emotions to create markets is going to be hard. But I'm gonna give it a shot right now.
I like to justify the kind of marketing I do as more honorable, with more integrity because corporate buying decisions are based on rational choice with built in controls on the purchase side to limit bad decisions. Except of course there's all kinds of evidence to dispute that. Companies make terrible purchase decisions for all the wrong reasons all the time.
Then there's the economic myth of the rational man. Consumers behave irrationally and often against their best interests when making so called buying decisions. Is it really a decision when whim, want & impulse are the drivers? That same mythical rational man is running our corporations and making buying decisions on behalf of the company. We coach our sellers that all buyers are people, implying they therefore are subject to those same impulses - and perhaps manipulation - as well.
In professional services the many smart, ethical people responsible for selling and delivering work often have a distaste for sales. I think it is for just this reason - the implication of manipulation in the selling (and marketing) process. It is an oft stated objection that consultants are not used car salesmen. They are trusted advisors who help organizations solve problems that impede growth and help unlock high performance. Lofty goal that.
The thing is, without finding buyers with need and coin and communicating with them to convince them to part with that coin which they value more highly than they value the solution you promise, said consultant would soon be out of business.
One less bloodsucking consultant is no loss some might say. But it is a loss of income in the form of jobs and taxes. Business is necessary. It's not inherently evil or immoral or unethical. It is human nature to work, create and do. And cooperation not competition tends to provide a stronger basis for a successful economy and a stable society.
So therefore conscious marketing should be a fundamental part of any economy. Market making on actual need or pain, not manufactured or manipulated need or pain and respect for the intelligence, irrationality and higher self aims of the buyer can be a way to reconcile that rant and this reflection.
Marketing is not evil, it just is; the more commerce, the more intermediaries, the more marketing. Like politics, commerce is inevitable whenever you get more than two people together, especially in survival. Bartering the skill and output of one with the skill and output of the other is the naturally efficient way humans adapted to ensure not just survival but the good life. Moral, ethical, philosophical and legal systems exist to support or mitigate man's baser instincts and irrationality.
You can't have commerce, markets or economies without marketing but you don't have to manipulate to make the market. Just as organizations can come together for a goal other than to make money or integrate a more socially conscious or responsible (or at least do no harm) goal along with the money making, marketing can be useful, illuminating and exactly what those lofty consultants aim for.
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