The New Evolution of Marketing
Living these days...
is no walk in the Park.
We are saddled with 10% unemployment.
A lot of young families are burdened with debt and most household require two earners to make ends meet.
Well, expect no favors from our corporate masters.
On top of real-life issues we must, in today's world, side-step pitfalls and mines to unravel a world of gimmickry and guise.
The great game isn't just played by world leaders waging alliances and wars along religious and ideological lines.
It just as much lurks in the grand theater of the consumer-marketplace.
And it's the law of the jungle alright: to have, or be had.
The corporations have a wealth of data, talented analysts, and techniques that can circumvent our senses and draw attention unwittingly.
Supercomputers crunch data on gazillions of transactions to generate information on what we buy, where we buy, when we buy, and what prompts us to buy.
The information is gathered to formulate strategy and to 'optimize' pricing.
However, as expected, it has led to a form of manipulation.
No matter how you navigate the advertised enticements, sales-channels and pricing gimmicks are subsequent gambits that await you.
There are multitudes of institutions with floors of analysts, and databases, spinning frameworks to cast a grip on your next purchase decision.
Corporations these days will charge a price depending on what the client is 'willing' to pay in order to build price and profit premiums.
Sometimes, this means cornering or 'forcing' the client into paying something due to circumstances such as emergencies.
The financial world is no exception to such exploitations.
Today, most people are weary of sales tactics offering anything for free.
If anyone was to go out there with a genuinely free offer, people would bury it in suspicion.
And, they're right.
Corporations have found an effective method of cloaking products as cheap or free per their prime pricing-mechanism, then applying a makeup charge through some secondary, unsuspecting channel or accessory.
It's the next-generation of selling the razor cheap and the blades dear.
Here are a couple of financial games out there that are now denizens of the exploit...
- Credit card companies routinely advertise zero percent rates on balance transfers for a given number of months.
However, the interest rate is converted into a seemingly innocuous balance-transfer fee.
Hence, it isn't zero percent by any stretch of the imagination.
And since this fee is collected up front, the credit card company makes a nice yield (the extra income to be made by reinvesting the money) on it.
Only they never show it as such.
They book it as fee revenue.
Behind the scenes, they are calculating the uptake.
- Car dealerships sometimes advertise offers of something like $3,000 cash-back or zero percent interest on the car loan.
In fact, the $3,000 is being charged in lieu of the interest.
If you buy on cash, you don't have to pay it.
Otherwise, it is added onto the price of the car and your loan gets an official seal of zero percent.
Again, the loan interest is now melded into the price of the car and collected up front.
How many of us buy a car on cash? - A dirtier tactic is when companies knowingly place small and innocuous charges on your accounts with the intention of refunding these if you find out.
They know that most of us have little patience or time to fight it, and will pass the nickel and dime stuff by.
Pricing charades are well past the financial industry.
For example, U-Haul aggressively advertises that its smaller trucks are available for rent at $19.
95 per day.
Once you get there to rent one, you discover the secondary pricing mechanism of 79 cents per mile.
With a sixty mile haul, the price will easily triple.
I could go on, but you get the gist.
In this great society of ours, the people who are sometimes frowned upon as nuisances by government and corporations are the ones holding up the great equilibrium of consumer-interest and corporate-exploit that must prevail for us to retain integrity.
is no walk in the Park.
We are saddled with 10% unemployment.
A lot of young families are burdened with debt and most household require two earners to make ends meet.
Well, expect no favors from our corporate masters.
On top of real-life issues we must, in today's world, side-step pitfalls and mines to unravel a world of gimmickry and guise.
The great game isn't just played by world leaders waging alliances and wars along religious and ideological lines.
It just as much lurks in the grand theater of the consumer-marketplace.
And it's the law of the jungle alright: to have, or be had.
The corporations have a wealth of data, talented analysts, and techniques that can circumvent our senses and draw attention unwittingly.
Supercomputers crunch data on gazillions of transactions to generate information on what we buy, where we buy, when we buy, and what prompts us to buy.
The information is gathered to formulate strategy and to 'optimize' pricing.
However, as expected, it has led to a form of manipulation.
No matter how you navigate the advertised enticements, sales-channels and pricing gimmicks are subsequent gambits that await you.
There are multitudes of institutions with floors of analysts, and databases, spinning frameworks to cast a grip on your next purchase decision.
Corporations these days will charge a price depending on what the client is 'willing' to pay in order to build price and profit premiums.
Sometimes, this means cornering or 'forcing' the client into paying something due to circumstances such as emergencies.
The financial world is no exception to such exploitations.
Today, most people are weary of sales tactics offering anything for free.
If anyone was to go out there with a genuinely free offer, people would bury it in suspicion.
And, they're right.
Corporations have found an effective method of cloaking products as cheap or free per their prime pricing-mechanism, then applying a makeup charge through some secondary, unsuspecting channel or accessory.
It's the next-generation of selling the razor cheap and the blades dear.
Here are a couple of financial games out there that are now denizens of the exploit...
- Credit card companies routinely advertise zero percent rates on balance transfers for a given number of months.
However, the interest rate is converted into a seemingly innocuous balance-transfer fee.
Hence, it isn't zero percent by any stretch of the imagination.
And since this fee is collected up front, the credit card company makes a nice yield (the extra income to be made by reinvesting the money) on it.
Only they never show it as such.
They book it as fee revenue.
Behind the scenes, they are calculating the uptake.
- Car dealerships sometimes advertise offers of something like $3,000 cash-back or zero percent interest on the car loan.
In fact, the $3,000 is being charged in lieu of the interest.
If you buy on cash, you don't have to pay it.
Otherwise, it is added onto the price of the car and your loan gets an official seal of zero percent.
Again, the loan interest is now melded into the price of the car and collected up front.
How many of us buy a car on cash? - A dirtier tactic is when companies knowingly place small and innocuous charges on your accounts with the intention of refunding these if you find out.
They know that most of us have little patience or time to fight it, and will pass the nickel and dime stuff by.
Pricing charades are well past the financial industry.
For example, U-Haul aggressively advertises that its smaller trucks are available for rent at $19.
95 per day.
Once you get there to rent one, you discover the secondary pricing mechanism of 79 cents per mile.
With a sixty mile haul, the price will easily triple.
I could go on, but you get the gist.
In this great society of ours, the people who are sometimes frowned upon as nuisances by government and corporations are the ones holding up the great equilibrium of consumer-interest and corporate-exploit that must prevail for us to retain integrity.
