MARKETING IS ABOUT SELLING PLACEBOS! | THE COGNITIVE MARKETER #business #entrepreneur #marketing

Marketing has much in common with selling placebos. While they both work, no one knows exactly how or why. When a doctor prescribes you medication, there are actually two forces at work. One is the medical chemical effect of the drug, but there's another one: the placebo effect. Yes, the placebo effect in medicine may well be psychological, but there's no doubt that it aids healing. There's a ton of research showing that placebos really work. But for some people, the fact that I can give you a sugar pill to get rid of your headache somehow makes it look like I'm cheating. Science is uncomfortable with the placebo effect because it can't 100% explain it. I think the marketing industry is in a similar position in terms of quantifying economic value. Rather than add, or maybe multiply, a product's perceptual value with its intrinsic value, we try to remove the psychological determinant. It's as though we think it's irrelevant. But value creation is as much about designing the optimum environment for product consumption as it is about the manufacturer of the product itself.