Though the exact percentage is debatable, the fact is that the vast majority of U.S. GDP is made up of personal consumption. The American consumer doesn’t just drive the U.S. economy, for decades he’s been driving the global one as well. Though that dynamic is slowly changing as Americans cut back on just about everything we buy, for the better part of the last 60 years, the U.S. consumer has been king. And from this has sprung a massive marketing and advertising industry coldly focused on a singular goal: getting us to buy as much stuff as they possibly can.
In his new book Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, marketing guru Martin Lindstrom trains a bright light on his own industry to uncover all the unsavory things that marketers do to subtly, or not so subtly, influence our buying habits. Lindstrom’s agreed to answer your questions, so fire away in the comments section. As always, we’ll post his replies in due course.
Oh, and to prime the pump, here’s the Table of Contents:
1. Buy, Buy Baby: When companies start marketing to us in the womb
2. Peddling Panic and Paranoia: Why fear sells
3. I Can’t Quit You: Brand addicts, shopaholics, and why we can’t live without our smart phones
4. Buy It, Get Laid: The new face of sex (and the sexes) in advertising
5. Under Pressure: The power of peers
6. Oh, Sweet Memories: The new (but also old) face of nostalgia marketing
7. Marketers’ Royal Flush: The hidden powers of celebrity and fame
8. Hope in a Jar: The price of health, happiness, and spiritual enlightenment
9. Every Breath You Take, They’ll Be Watching You: The end of privacy
10. I’ll Have What Mrs. Morgenson Is Having: The most powerful hidden persuader of them all: us
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. You can also watch it on 
Do you think that despite the fact that we can consciously learn about the tricks marketers use, we will still fall for the same marketing tricks because of our human nature? As in is the evolutionary psychological tricks innate?
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I consider myself a cautious consumer who resists marketing in general steering away from new products until price falls (I did not get a DVD player until 2004), I buy generic products and believe that their quality is equal to name brand and don’t have a smart phone. What habits would indicate that I have fallen prey to marketing without realizing it?
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Buying generic products because their generic nature and appearance markets to you that “they provide good value for money”, no money is put into packaging, decoration and marketing campaigns. “What you see is what you get” IS marketing. That is to say, the anti-marketing of generic products IS marketing because it has the same goal.
(Yes, Yes, I do realize this isn’t an absolute truth, where the added value and presence of marketing is less, for example when buying a shovel, the effect of being ‘different’, that is generic, is low or might even be non-existent.)
Is there a relation between the marketing budget and quality of the product?
Your recent op-ed in the NY Times was more or less destroyed by the psychology blogosphere. Should we be more optimistic about the book?
“it’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want” – jobs. Essence of this book. Nice job!
Average consumers don’t drive the economy; job creators drive the economy.
I habitually buy store-brands or generic (except when the national brand is cheaper due to sales).
Does that make me smart or just a sucker for a different marketing ploy?
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There is a distinct upside to brands as well.
A friend recently had car trouble in an unfamiliar area, and I (since their cell was dying) set up their tow and repair. My choice was based entirely on my experience with another franchise with the same brand. Was that the entire basis for my decision? Not entirely, but the choice was between two known brands to the exclusion of all the other local shops.
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The poster sent us ’0 which is not a hashcash value.
Do you think there is a tipping point for a product’s success? Once a product successfully reaches a certain amount of people, other people see it and then buy it to fit in, rather than because of direct marketing.