Surfacing the Hidden Persuaders July 16, 2009
Posted by Manik Kinra in Uncategorized.trackback
In 1957 Vance Packard published Hidden Persuaders in which he described how the marketing industry used depth psychology and motivational research to manipulate the public. He explored the “large-scale efforts … to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences.”
Chapters like ‘The psychoseduction of children’ and ‘Self-images for everybody’ left no doubt about Packard’s moral contempt for marketing’s uses of psychological techniques. His criticism was that marketers typically see consumers as bundles of daydreams, misty hidden yearnings, guilt complexes, and irrational emotional blockages. Hence, according to them, people satisfy some of these suppressed desires by using socially acceptable products.
(The writer is Director, Kotler-Srinivasan Centre for Research in Marketing, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai.)
Read more – http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/2009/07/16/stories/2009071650110300.htm
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