'Needs' of Consumers Are Artificially Created

“ 'Needs ' of consumers are artificially created ”
“I think the big force is going to be consumer buying power.”
Roy Romer

Markets have always been relying on consumers. Their main purpose was to satisfy consumer necessities and this is what most of the producers did. From old times they tried to trace people needs and to come with solutions to it. All the products were made to please the consumers so that the firms would have revenues higher than costs. This would follow to profits that would incite the manufacturers to produce more. As time went by, tastes of consumers began to change due to the fact that there were too many goods in the market. Then, for the first time, marketing was applied. In order to stand up to demand for new things producers began to search for new paths to satisfy clients and to be able to supply the market with necessary quantity of demanded products. Marketing became an indispensable tool which indeed helped producers to satisfy consumer needs and wishes. By searching for new opportunities to be closer to clients, marketing extended the concept of market by introducing wishes besides needs. The concept of a need never changed, because the same needs that people had 200 years ago, have we – air, food, shelter, but 200 years ago we were not rich as we are now. People tended to use all their resources for needs. Nowadays we have larger economies which give us opportunities to spend more and to be able to fulfill our needs and besides that to meet some of our wishes. Marketing creates needs by satisfying wishes. An empirical example would be the mobile phone which is considered today a created need. In fact it was created for people to be able to communicate easier than they used to. In 2009, cell phone subscription reached 4.6 billion which denotes that roughly more than half of the people on the Earth had a mobile phone. In my opinion it was not a need until it appeared, but definitely it was needed. It is a very useful facility that helps people to save time and so does half of the population, but do they really need it? In the old days, our grand-parents didn’t have a need for mobile phone because they communicated via letters and telegram, children were gathering on playgrounds only in the front yard to enjoy time spent with their peers. Today we write letters only in special cases and even for kids it is a must-have accessory because their parents can reach them immediately if they see that their kids are not on their usual place. It became so much easy to communicate that even old people started to use it because it is more easy and fast to call or to send a message than to write a letter and to wait until it would be delivered. We see that cell phones became indispensable and thus we can say that it is an artificially created need. Consumers are very different therefore producers try to distinguish people, especially those who are willing to pay more for their wishes and make profits out of it. A theoretical argument would be the Consumer Surplus. The main idea of it is that there a few people in the market that pay for products a very high price, which is actually overpaying the market price. So if rational people tend to pay the market price, the above ones are more careless about that. It is a consequence of marketing – people get a lot of information about products that makes them willing to pay a higher price which seems irrational at the first glance, but it’s actually true. By advertising the quality, brand and design of a product marketing has a great effect on the subconscious of the client changing its views over the whole product. To sum up, we can say that marketing has an important impact on consumers because it helps them to understand what do they want and what are their needs. Its main purpose is to inform potential buyers about the importance of one or another thing and leave the consumers to decide whether they should purchase it or not. Bibliography: * http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/consumer.html * http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-10454065-78.html * Frank, Robert H, Microeconomics and Behavior, 8th edition, McGrawHill –“ Applications of rational choice and demand theories”

Bibliography: * http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/consumer.html * http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-10454065-78.html * Frank, Robert H, Microeconomics and Behavior, 8th edition, McGrawHill –“ Applications of rational choice and demand theories”