Marketing Teeth Whitening the Market of Dentistry

Marketing

Teeth Whitening

The market of dentistry might initially seem to be a predominantly health-driven market, rather than one driven by consumer hopes and fears regarding their status and sexual appeal. However, the recent advertisements for teeth whitening devices call into question the healthy, medical image of the commercial toothpaste market. Crest White Strips, for example, stresses the seductiveness of the individuals at the forefront of its advertising. The desired consumer behavior it draws upon is the motivation of improving one's appearance for purely cosmetic and cosmological reasons. In a product line that traditionally used to push products based on the fact that one out of every ten dentists preferred a particular brand of paste, now the fact that a white and healthy smile, a smile that creates the appearance of health rather than a mouth that actually is healthy causes in the teeth whitener market the impression that the marketers are pressing the consumer to buy based on the motivation of reactivating a social life based upon a youthful appearance, rather than reduced gum disease.

Tooth whiteners, however, because they can be performed in dental offices, have a certain ethical questionability to them -- they do not improve mouth health, but suggest that they might, given the medical marketing that still surrounds the art of dentistry. They can be expensive, running anywhere from thirty to six hundred dollars. Moreover, the ease and comfort of the procedure is stressed, such as with Crest Night Strips, which are applied overnight to the teeth, as opposed to the often uncomfortable but far more necessary work needed to keep teeth in order, through work at a dentist's office. None of the marketing positions itself as a replacement to good dental care, but there is a certain implication in some of the advertising surrounding these increasingly popular cosmetic devices that are not even particularly effective -- "while you may not get the pearly white smile of a Bride's Magazine model, you're likely to get a slightly brighter smile." (ABC, 2004)