Mike Abasov

One of my business profs was saying that marketing is cheating. He truly believed that marketers are convincing people to spent some ridicules amounts of money on the things they don’t need. Quite a common misunderstanding, eh? On the other hand, quite a surprise to hear such things from a business teacher.

One of the examples, I’ve been hearing for hundreds of times, is about Nike’s products. Those are made somewhere in Asia almost for free, but the price in stores is a hundred times higher. Basically, the power of the brand, the promise of some ‘coolness’ or whatever you will get by wearing this pair of sneakers, is what you pay for. And the point people make is that you pay for nothing. Looks like cheating.

However, is the brand power really nothing? In the world, where majority of people believe in brands, buy brands, and even are brands, it’s not nothing! Actually, those sneakers do enhance your characteristics in the ways you expect, because people have the same expectations (or perception) as you. For example, if everyone believes that it’s 3 o’clock in Vancouver right now, then my watch works properly, and I didn’t buy some crap.

In other words, as long as not only buyer believes that his purchase is reasonably priced, but also people around him, the price is truly reasonable, and brand delivers its promises, and everyone’s happy. No cheating detected.