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Originally Posted by SuperTrooper
In a market with cheap, plentiful gas you can shout "FUEL ECONOMY" at people until you are blue in the face, or broke, and they won't care. Looking at the car market research from a year ago finds fuel economy fifth or lower for buyer importance.
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Then why have the Japanese (& others) consistently gained market share by selling cars that are smaller and get better fuel economy than what Detroit has chosen to produce? Why did small cars like the Mini & the Miata - not to mention the Prius - become sales hits? Why do people keep running the smaller late '80s - early '90s Hondas & Toyota pickups, and put money into customizing them?
I'll grant you that it may not be fuel economy that sells these cars. The higher mpg is simply a consequence of their small size. It's the same argument, though. Detroit has so successfully spread its "Americans don't want small cars" meme that people will believe it even when faced with the undeniable fact that a lot of Americans do.
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The direction of advertizing doesn't appear out of thin air, it's based on millions of $$$ being spent on market research asking the people what they WANT and then trying to make what you have for sale fit that desire.
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In fact, it's more often the other way around. Advertising more often attempts to change people's desires so that they want whatever is being marketed. I'm sure you can think of many examples of completely useless products that were successfully marketed: remember the Pet Rock? Or consider the fashion industry, and how jeans with a designer name on the butt, or running shoes with a swoosh, can be sold for much more than the identical product that doesn't have them.
Who ever asked people if they wanted SUVs? There had always been a small niche market for SUV-like vehicles such as the Jeep Cherokee, Land Rover, and Toyota's Land Cruiser. Then Detroit found a legal loophole that'd let them sell passenger vehicles that only had to meet the lower truck standards, so they could go on building the big vehicles they wanted to sell. Then they spent the money on advertising to sell the idea of the SUV.