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Post by Ganbare! on Feb 10, 2010 8:08:09 GMT -5
Every year's the same story, a plethora of new albums, movies etc are released and consumers ultimately complain because of the lack of innovation in said titles. They ask and buy reluctantly millions of conservative spin offs, sequels or prequels but at the same time when something truly original is out, it sells most of the time poorly thus shutting down prospective innovative project judged risky..
Are we all guilty of this behavior?
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palavore
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I put my pants on just like the rest of you -- one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold posts.
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Post by palavore on Feb 11, 2010 10:42:06 GMT -5
I don't know what innovation in entertainment looks like. I've only been on this planet a short while, so everything looks new to me--whether it's old or hip. But I've noticed that new things get old pretty fast and old things seem newer than they actually are. I'm not really guilty of complaining much because I know where to find things that I like. It's being forced to endure something because it's "popular", "accepted" or "mainstream" that I don't like.
My tastes very much have an internal locus of control; only I can decide what I like. That sentiment seems commonplace enough in our consumer culture, but that psychology is quite apart from the norm given the environment of effective advertising. Positive emotions toward a brand or product is itself a service apart from the what we see as being the material source of those emotions. The power of suggestion can shift the locus of control from internal to external. When these associations are not properly maintained, you feel as though the product no longer meets your expectations, that it may not be "innovative" enough. In actuality, individual expectations don't follow any mathematical curves or models for innovation--you'd hardly recognize your predictions if they were repeated to you 10 years from now. Expectations are decided in the hard fought battle for the control of perception.
No, we are not guilty of ignoring true innovation. We are guilty of not recognizing the true source of our emotions, be it happiness or satisfaction.
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Post by Ganbare! on Feb 11, 2010 13:09:30 GMT -5
Auto industrialist H. Ford once said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses"
Promotion obviously influence consumers choices but still a mediocre offer not filling the bill won't sell, people are not that dumb, they know what they buy.
I've been studying market research for some time and never understood the consumer psychological paradox of asking for more innovation in cultural products while they conservatively put their money on established themes, franchises or artists. I conclude that in reality they are not inclined to welcome innovative products and services.
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palavore
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I put my pants on just like the rest of you -- one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold posts.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
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Post by palavore on Feb 11, 2010 19:14:29 GMT -5
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Post by betahat on Feb 14, 2010 18:54:54 GMT -5
>Are we all guilty of this behavior?
Yes. It's partly driven by an aversion to risk - given uncertainty about trying something new, be it food, entertainment, etc. - we go with what we know we like or something similar. That is a pretty fundamental human behavior. On the other hand there is undoubtedly some demand for novelty because the food and entertainment industries keep producing things that, while similar to what existed before and therefore "safe," are still different, which generates additional purchases. I think you can reduce human pursuit of entertainment choices to this dichotomy with every one of us occupying some place along the spectrum.
I tend to hate seeing the same movie twice, unlike my wife who loves re-runs and re-watching classic movies, but even I would hesitate to spend money on an album or movie that I had never heard of and which had no discernible connection to things I know (at the very least I would expect a review saying, they sound like X meets Y or I would expect a review from a movie critic whose tastes I generally agree with).
Fortunately technology has made it much easier to try before you buy - I recently went to see a show in SF by a band I'd never heard before, but only because I could listen to a sample of the band on myspace. You would think this would encourage novelty and innovation.
On the flipside, the proliferation of entertainment options due to technology, population growth and global integration means that things fall into smaller niches and it is harder to get mainstream recognition without major active promotion, since people are still by and large passive receivers of information and haven't fully configured their entertainment seeking activity to a fully active search mode (since after all, search costs even on the internet are by no means trivial).
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Post by Ganbare! on Feb 17, 2010 9:23:22 GMT -5
Kweel of you for posting a video to answer but it didn't actually provide any relevant scientific explanation. betahat You might get that alot but I think you have a very pedagogic way of conveying your thoughts on matters, definitely unlike me. What's big in entertainment marketing right now is to exploit known heroes/personal brands and extend them in cross media through sequels, spin offs, merchandising, cameos etc. The financial success of this strategy validates your point, people have an aversion to risk but declining sales of said universes/brands in time in favor of newer products show that consumers get bored at one point thus desiring new INCREMENTAL innovative titles. |
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Post by rob on Feb 17, 2010 12:11:21 GMT -5
The entertainment industry is no different than any other in the US these days (esp the manufacturing and food industry). Their MO:
ie. Homogenize a product to cater to as many people as possible...... own the IP/brand if possible, develop massive scale economies, eliminate or own the middle-men/distributors, squeeze every f*cking cost out of the system, dominate the market and create national oligopolies/monopolies (e.g., franchises) that can engage in predatory pricing and limit upstarts/competition.
So the music/entertainment you hear is about as good as that 48lb bag of nachos you bought at Costco.
Meanwhile, the "best" entertainment will come from the aisles of Wal Mart (and deliver fantastic shareholder value for two different oligopolies in the process)
We can talk about consumers wanting more diversity/better choices etc. and that's true, but in large part that preference gets outweighed by the $$$ savings of 'purchasing bulk', the general convenience/laziness of consumers, and the entrenched oligopolies who either own the content/brand/franchise/unique asset *or* the entire supply/distribution chain in their favour.... giving them the ability to actually mold/create consumer preference.
And speaking of which, that Taylor Swift song that's been blaring and pissing me off to no end, is now starting to sound not-so-bad.
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Post by admin on Feb 17, 2010 12:38:24 GMT -5
The entertainment industry is no different than any other in the US these days (esp the manufacturing and food industry). Their MO: ie. Homogenize a product to cater to as many people as possible...... own the IP/brand if possible, develop massive scale economies, eliminate or own the middle-men/distributors, squeeze every f*cking cost out of the system, dominate the market and create national oligopolies/monopolies (e.g., franchises) that can engage in predatory pricing and limit upstarts/competition. So the music/entertainment you hear is about as good as that 48lb bag of nachos you bought at Costco. Meanwhile, the "best" entertainment will come from the aisles of Wal Mart (and deliver fantastic shareholder value for two different oligopolies in the process) We can talk about consumers wanting more diversity/better choices etc. and that's true, but in large part that preference gets outweighed by the $$$ savings of 'purchasing bulk', the general convenience/laziness of consumers, and the entrenched oligopolies who either own the content/brand/franchise/unique asset *or* the entire supply/distribution chain in their favour.... giving them the ability to actually mold/create consumer preference. And speaking of which, that Taylor Swift song that's been blaring and pissing me off to no end, is now starting to sound not-so-bad. Rob breaks it down. This is a good/sad documentary: www.beforethemusicdies.com/ |
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palavore
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I put my pants on just like the rest of you -- one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold posts.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
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Post by palavore on Feb 17, 2010 13:12:28 GMT -5
^ The media landscape isn't quite like the transition to a conglomerated food industry. Now there was a complete restructuring culture and economy. Major record labels use to be much bigger and had greater market share than they do now. Regarding price controls... the internet shot a big hole in that one. DRM is just a joke. What really happened to music in America was a major cultural shift: from live and local performances to the car radio and DJs. Music capitols like Nashville have also put a musical brain drain on the diaspora of local talent. The restriction isn't really in the content (the ingredients in the bag of nachos, the innovation), but the available marketing space. Marketers have only so many opportunities in a day to get our attention. When do manage to distract us, what they're selling has to deliver--and that's where they've learned to master the tastes of a majority of consumers. American Idol is a perfect demonstration of this vetting process. And sometimes consumers aren't happy with or won't buy what they want. That's why the show is much bigger than the stage and you need a whole army of psychologists, sociologists, marketers, tend setters, and researchers. These are expensive operations, so they are not going to chase small potatoes and niche markets. That leaves a good part of consumers unsatisfied, but they eventually learn where to find their sizes. Kweel of you for posting a video to answer but it didn't actually provide any relevant scientific explanation. Well, I certainly wasn't going to repeat your own opinions!  I didn't think you were familiar with Douglas Rushkoff. I don't how you compare yourself to being more scientific or relevant than him. I think you might have funny ideas about certain words.  |
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Magic
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Post by Magic on Feb 18, 2010 5:05:13 GMT -5
I too fail to see any relevance between the youtube vid and OP's question.
Why are some of you implying that marketers ignore consumers desires and push their own goods and services to them? IMO this approach is wrong because they wouldn't have been resorting to panels or psychosociology research to define their product offering like they have been for so long.
Nevertheless corporations after elaborating a product that can potentially appeal to the customers do push their products via promotional campaigns.
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palavore
Full Member
I put my pants on just like the rest of you -- one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold posts.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Posts: 298
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Post by palavore on Feb 18, 2010 13:21:52 GMT -5
Why are some of you implying that marketers ignore consumers desires and push their own goods and services to them? Ganbare asked if consumers were hypocrites, that they buy what they complain about. What does the consumer desire with this contradiction? Should you respond to their words or their actions? The mind speaks one way, yet acts in another way. That's an easy decision, if your aim is money. Haha... their goal has always been to capture desire. If it was as easy as asking people what they want, they wouldn't need all those PhD's. The part of your mind that they are really interested in is the reptilian portion--not the logic or the language--because they know what feeds desire, what feeds choice. Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide was on NPR recently: Jonah Lehrer: Passions Of The Brain
And I think one of the best examples of this comes from the work of a neurologist named Antonio Demasio, who in the early 1980s was studying patients who, because of a brain tumor, lost the ability to experience their emotions. So they didn't feel the everyday feelings of fear and pleasure. And you'd think, if you were Plato, that these people would be philosopher-kings, that they would be perfectly rational creatures, they'd make the best set of decisions possible. And instead, what you find is that they are like me in the cereal aisle, that they're pathologically indecisive, that they would spend all day trying to figure out where to eat lunch.
They'd spend five hours choosing between a blue pen or a black pen or a red pen, that all these everyday decisions we take for granted, they couldn't make. And that's because they were missing these subtle, visceral signals that were telling them to just choose the black pen or to eat the tuna fish sandwich or whatever. And then when we're cut off from these emotional signals, the most basic decisions become all but impossible.
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