Wikipedia offers the following definition of marketing.
The American Marketing Association most recently defined Marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."
It is obvious those engaged in marketing are the key players in market-capitalism. Without them goods could not find markets. Without prospect of making vendible goods and services there would be no incentive to invest capital. Thus, there could be no return on capital and everything would grind to a halt. The only attempts to make markets would be by stallholders shouting their wares in traditional town centre market places.
Thus, society at large owes much to those marketing wares on behalf of others. They should be recognised as members of a learned profession and given due respect.
Two key aspects of marketing are market research and advertising. The latter depends upon the former if it is to be successful. Anything impeding these processes must be detrimental to market-capitalism and thus the well-being of all.
Until recent decades marketing, despite being intellectually challenging, was straightforward. Principal media for advertising were the traditional billboard (now jazzed up by digital technology), newspapers and magazines, together with radio and television. Always ingenious, marketing professionals exploited new opportunities as they arose e.g. telephone-marketing, advertisement on VHS video films and later, with great perspicacity, the unskipable 'ads' on commercially produced DVDs and streaming media.
Marketing was highly successful and in no need of outside assistance. It was a competitive and lucrative handmaiden of market-capitalism. Advertising campaigns, one way or another, reached almost every member of the population. The preferences people showed for particular media outlets/products were good indicators of socio-economic status (taste and spending power) and special interests (e.g. messing about in boats). Thus, in addition to scatter-gun advertising it was practicable to target niche markets.
Mass take-up of the Internet was seemingly leading to a marketing bonanza: El Dorado for the taking. Opportunities arose for mass and personalised targeting. Initially these were exploited on web pages e.g. 'The Pirate Bay' shows advertisement for the services of 'loose women' based on geographical information gleaned from the user's web browser. Now it has crept into applications ('apps') used on mobile phones and pads.
So far so good. However, the cloud to which the silver lining was attached became evident. For little capital outlay Uncle Tom Cobley and all could set up companies offering those providing Internet-based services revenue from advertisements. These agents and the sites signed up to them earned revenue from those promoting products and services based on the popularity of sites and, in particular, the number of 'clicks' on an advertisement. This business model led to development of 'tracking' technologies to keep an eye on the interests/preferences of individuals. So, alongside visible advertisements there is huge hidden Internet traffic that properly must be called market-research though some Luddites refer to it as 'snooping'.
These developments have led to emergence of vast 'consumer-tracking-based' companies like Google and 'ad-revenue-based' companies like Twitter. The ecosystem supports a plethora of other companies great and small.
Unfortunately, this marketing business model has given rise to innovative means of fraud. One such, is arranging for false 'clicks' on advertisements in order to garner extra income from the advertisement's owner. Doubtless, by international agreement, such as mediated via TTIP, law enforcement resources shall be set to catching these market-capitalism damaging criminals and the judiciary shall have draconian measure at their disposal.
Business models involving payment for 'clicks' are fascinating departure from traditional means. For example, it would not have been possible for a billboard provider to charge according to the number of people glancing at an advertisement; the nearest proxy is human traffic density in the area. Moreover, with traditional advertising campaigns it was relatively easy for producers of goods and services to determine whether expenditure on the services of those in marketing was bearing fruit. Maybe, Internet-based marketing is too diffuse for similar calculation to be made i.e. more 'faith' determined than ever.
Thus far we have discussed some of the consequences for marketing from the Internet. It is clear that exciting possibilities have emerged. Yet, balanced against these is a potential 'downside' from fragmentation of the marketing/tracking industry. New opportunities for fraud, as we have seen, may be cut short by determined government action.
In market-capitalism one expects 'players' to adapt or go under as circumstances change. That must apply to the marketing industry along with everything else. The business of marketing shall reconfigure. However, even the staunchest supporters of laissez-faire market-capitalism acknowledge need to prevent circumstances damaging to market-capitalism as a whole. Monopoly and monopsony are two such. Also taken as dangerous, and recognised thus in legislation, is market-rigging.
A new danger, hitherto thought impossible (if conceived of at all), has emerged. It threatens the existence of market-capitalism. Left unchallenged it will bring about collapse of world economies. There shall be return to poverty and brutality. This disaster shall not arise from overt malice. It shall arise from selfish behaviour by individuals and some businesses. It stems from turning off the tap from which allegedly unwanted information flows.
The matter of concern is wrongful interference with the flow of information on the Internet between commercial enterprises, and that between them and potential consumers. Law relating to Internet use is developing apace. It is clear, in most jurisdictions, that digitally encoded information is not anybody's for the taking or manipulating. For instance, it, entirely properly, is illegal to propagate without authorisation copies of a work owned under copyright law by another. Also, it is illegal to break (reverse engineer) digital rights management (DRM) protection of copyrighted works. It is an offence to 'hack' into somebody else's online sever; two allegedly errant UK teenagers may learn this to their cost. That is all sensible. Enforcement of law in these matters is improving on a daily basis. For instance, the UK National Crime Agency, brainchild of the brilliant Mrs May, is striving with ever greater success to contain, then eradicate, Internet-related crime; the only thing lacking is empowerment of judiciary to hand down truly exemplary sentences. For example, copyright infringement is at present treated more leniently than, say, grievous bodily harm (GBH); that is short-sighted; it does not recognise that GBH affects but one individual, often someone not much more morally worthy than the perpetrator, whereas copyright infringements put at risk entire creative industries with their numerous workforce and shareholders.
Unfortunately, the problem alluded to here pertaining to marketing does not ,on the face of it, carry the gravity of copyright infringement, 'cracking' DRM, or viewing illegal pornography. In reality it is far more serious than any of those heinous crimes: it threatens our economic existence at the deepest level.
Interference with the flow of commercial information relating to marketing appears a 'victimless crime'. It may be claimed that unwanted information is foisted on consumers. It may be said that much of this information is annoying. Some may whine over how this 'unwanted' information takes up their 'bandwidth'; this last may be dealt with immediately: it is a temporary problem, if any, because bandwidth is always increasing and at lesser cost than before.
We don't wish to encourage moral turpitude; turpitude soon to be a major infraction of law we hope. Yet, we must mention avenues toward that because we cannot proceed otherwise. There are three major dangers.
1. Advertisement blocking software available, legally at present, to the consumer. Have you considered that by installing this software you might also become prey to ingenious malware such as snoops on your banking details?
2. Software, related to the above, controlling the activity of scripts' embedded in HTML code. At present there are 32 'scripts' associated with the front-page of the online Telegraph. People objecting to this don't grasp that each is there for a purpose. It's there to improve the consumers' experience. It gives access to wonderful facilities like Facebook and Twitter. It allows thrilling video spontaneously to spew forth; don't complain because some advertising videos are crass and annoying; the technology is in early days so advertisers will polish their offerings to make them truly enthralling despite one not being interested in the particular product; bear with it, eschew selfish use of blocking software.
3. Commercial enterprises offering ISPs and mobile phone operators opportunity to block advertisements. The selling points are freeing consumers from annoyance and liberating bandwidth for other purposes. This is the best candidate for immediate and enforceable legislation.
We don't believe piecemeal legislation a productive approach to controlling the 'Wild West' of the Internet.. What's required is a coherent and overarching solution. Sort out anti-capitalist 'add blocking', copyright infringement, access to evil misinformation on 'wikileaks", access to extremist opinion on 'Russia Today', access to the Darknet (e.g.TOR), and immoral viewing of fifteen year old girl 'selfies' uploaded to social media in one legislative go. Think draconian, the world shall be a better place.
To save you the bother of working out suitable measures from first principles we offer the link below to get you started. In personal communication Mrs May stated she was much taken with it.
Internet unrestricted use must no longer be permitted
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Source: Marketing, the bedrock of commerce, needs protection
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