Introduction: Martians and Marketers

Abstract

Marketers are similar in nature to the Martians in War of the Worlds who studied human beings carefully with an eye toward using them for their own purposes: the Martians to suck people’s blood, the marketers to sell people goods and services. Several definitions of marketing are offered and marketing is contrasted with advertising and it is suggested that there is a symbiotic relationship between the two. A case study of the relationship between marketing and advertising is offered by Fred Goldberg in his analysis of the California Cooler campaign. This is followed by a discussion of the amount of media spending on advertising and a list of speculations about the impact of marketing on American culture and society. Finally, there is an exploration of some different academic disciplines and the way they look at marketing and advertising.

Down the hall from my office…is an equipment room with more than 100 cameras. Eight-millimeter video cameras, direct to hard drive, digital, even a few ancient Super 8 time-lapse film cameras.…In that same equipment room are piled cases of blank eight-millimeter videotapes, two hours per tape, five hundred tapes to a case. Across the world, we have now shot more than fifty-thousand hours of tape per year. We also have dozens of handheld computers, or PDAs, on which we painstakingly jot down the answers from the thousands of shopper interviews we conduct.…Even with all that high-tech equipment, though, our most important research tool for the past thirty years remains a piece of paper we call the track sheet, in the hands of individuals we call trackers. Trackers are the field researchers of the science of shopping, the scholars of shopping, or, more precisely, of shoppers. Essentially, trackers stealthily make their way through stores following shoppers and noting everything they do. Usually a tracker begins by loitering inconspicuously near a store’s entrance, waiting for a shopper to enter, at which point the “track” starts. The tracker will stick with the unsuspecting individual (or individuals) as long as he or she is in the store (excluding trips to the dressing room or restroom) and will record on the track virtually everything the shopper does.

Paco Underhill, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping

Here’s something I learned at Lands’ End: how challenging it is, despite gung-ho books written by self-appointed marketing gurus, to win the hearts and minds of customers. While nearly every company on the Sell Side boasts that it is “customer-centered”—viz. they do it all for us, many retailers are just blowing smoke.

Lee Eisenberg, Shoptimism: Why the American Consumer Will Keep on Buying No Matter What