Comment on Andrea's Blog

So I was reading Andrea's blog and the article on Subliminal Advertising caught my eye. I also have taken other courses here in which we discussed subliminal advertising. The whole idea of it seems to be very dishonest and manipulative. I agree with Andrea in that people want to be in control of their own lives and an advertising technique like this would probably only appear to be a good idea to the companies using it and not to the prospective consumers. I do not know of anyone who would appreciate someone secretly sending information to their brain that they are not aware of and that may affect decisions they make.

While many people have done studies and researched this technique, some proved it to be effective and others proved it to be only a little effective or not effective at all. The example I learned in my Buyer Behavior class is that let's say you were really thirsty for some soda. You like Coke and Pepsi equally and do not have a preference for one or the other. If there was a Coke vending machine right next to a Pepsi vending machine and each was the same price then subliminal advertising might work. If you had been exposed to subliminal advertising urging you to buy and drink Coke then you probably would choose Coke in this situation. If this is true and that is the most effective subliminal advertising can be than I would not really have a problem with this technique. In this case it would only be an issue for the two competing companies, not us the consumers because they have something to gain or lose but we did not care if we were drinking Coke or Pepsi because they were equally good decisions for us. So great article, Andrea, I enjoyed elaborating on it!