Two Marketing Roles: Empowered Communicator and Demand Generator
Like many complex topics, it is difficult to find an agreed definition of marketing. For the purposes of this article, I define marketing as: any activity involved in facilitating the sale of a good or service, excluding (but constantly feeding back information) the actual production of the good or the provision of the service itself.
As a field, marketing has become increasingly sophisticated and powerful in recent decades. In fact, it has become not just an art, but a research-driven, mathematically-based social science funded by billions of corporate, government, and nonprofit dollars every year.
Marketing seems to have two faces in the eyes of the general public. Some see it as a manipulative practice designed to lure people into buying things they don’t need and contribute to environmental degradation by encouraging consumerism. The advent of spam, disruptive telemarketing practices, spam, and online browser pop-ups actually contribute to an unfavorable image of marketing in the eyes of the general public.
At the same time, almost all organizations and consumers unequivocally benefit from the practice of marketing every day. Marketing can act as a conduit between companies and other organizations that offer some kind of value and those consumers who will benefit from consuming that value.
This article explores two roles of marketing in terms of its effects on consumers and the environment.
Marketing as Empowered Communicator: In cases where a potential buyer can derive real value through the act of consuming a particular product or service, it can be argued that marketing is an authoritative communicator of this value. I use the adjective empowered because the voice of the promotion today is much stronger, more sophisticated and subtle than the voice of a single person or company. In cases where marketing serves as a useful assistant that bridges the knowledge gap between the seller and the consumer, then marketing is fulfilling its role as an empowered communicator.
Marketing as a demand generator: Marketing can also play a different role – it can actually help create a need for a product or service in the mind of a prospective consumer. When promotional activities serve to create a need for value that was not previously perceived by the consumer, we can see marketing as a demand generator. In other words: the buyer sometimes does not need a product or service until it becomes the target of a marketing campaign.
Is this latter role of marketing ethical? We need to ask ourselves: do we really need many of the plastic, paper, wood and metal products in our homes and gardens today? Do we really need all the services available at our local mall or mall? This is a question for the modern age, and it is difficult to single out any product or service and declare that it universally has no inherent value to a potential buyer. On the other hand, given our planet’s looming environmental problems, on the whole we could probably say with confidence “No, we really don’t need all this STUFF!” In this sense, the demand generator role of marketing seems to have merit.
What is the correct role? I believe that both marketing roles are valid. Marketing can play a necessary role in educating people about the goods and services that may be of value to them. On the other hand, the world’s marketing machines have become so fine-tuned that consumers can sometimes buy goods or services they don’t really want or need. To mitigate the effects of marketing’s role as a demand generator, we, as consumers and sellers, must consider each transaction in terms of its potential impact on ourselves and the environment.