American intercontinental university discussion questions and plagiarism concerns

Marketing 1a,b

While it is understandable to think that marketing efforts create needs and wants, I disagree and believe these efforts are secondary to the way they satisfy needs and wants. The needs and wants of any individual person is an internal and personal experience. The influence of marketing campaigns only add detail to the basic emotional needs of the person. To suggest that marketing creates these needs gives little importance to the self determined person free from mysterious influence.

Chance (2003) claimed that "people may decide to buy a product or service because they need it. But they choose which brand to buy, or company to buy from, based on which one meets their wants." This distinction between needs and wants separates the individual from himself and does not treat the human condition with much respect. Marketing requires a flexible attitude that attempts to benefit from the collective needs and wants of any group. Attempts to create these wants, is irresponsible and ineffective. The market's ability to rapidly change demonstrate the fickle behavior of the human race.

Marketing professionals should take the attitude of helping others by informing others how to satisfy and solve their problems. Creating new problems, while seeming economically advantageous, unleashes many new variables and could backfire. The human mind is very aware of such techniques and places the advertiser at risk if they are seen as duplicitous or slick. Needs and wants are personal and can only be solved by a personal approach, independent of the marketer.

1B

The last decade accompanied by the display of power the online world has created new problems in the area of personal privacy. The issue is important in both the online and offline worlds, but it is important to distinguish the scope of the issue between the two arenas. Steel supported this, "in recent years, marketers have grown more adept at culling consumer data from an array of online and offline sources -- including real-estate and motor-vehicle records, consumer surveys, credit-card data and logs of Web visitors' online behavior -- to identify the most receptive audiences for their ads." While both are invasive and useful practices, the off line world is much more important than the online world.