Advertising budgets, not product merit, determine what consumers buy
Evidence
The central postulate of the rationality of economic agents and the optimality of the equilibriums produced in a state of free competition is here threatened by the most banal observation of the attention economy in the context of a heavily mediatized regime. Consumers can only consider buying products whose existence they are aware of; but their awareness of this existence is based less on the inherent merit of the products than on the advertising budgets promoting them; so the economy as a whole does not find its equilibrium around the most useful or agreeable products, but around the products that are most aggressively promoted. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 175
Categorization
- QUESTION: How far does this argument extend? The author concedes distortions mainly hit cultural goods—could the same logic be pressed to claim even basic commodities are attention-scarred?
- ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the sacrifice-economy argument in ‘On Sacrifice’ where ritual competition for gods’ attention (not intrinsic merit) determines outcomes.
- XREF: connects to: Advertising compels consumers to identify with and demand the products imposed on them — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 98; Brand advertising aims to convert consumers rather than persuade them — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 273; Advertising manipulates consumers into wanting what they are made to want. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 258 (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Advertising compels consumers to identify with and demand the products imposed on them
#corroborates(0.90) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 98 - Advertising manipulates consumers into wanting what they are made to want.
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 258 - Advertising could sell solutions to problems consumers did not know they had
#expands(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 189 - Advertising’s power to create demand is contested partly by definition
#qualifies(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 284 - Marketing works by making consumers feel immune to it while they buy in
#expands(0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 393 - Production budgets signal value independent of any real meaning in products
#corroborates(0.80) - Perceived board responsibility, not intentionality, drives consumer purchase intent
#qualifies(0.80) - Advertising’s stated purpose was to manufacture needs, not merely inform
#corroborates(0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 468 - Brand advertising aims to convert consumers rather than persuade them
#qualifies(0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 273 - Consumers buy culture-industry products knowing they are being manipulated
#complicates(0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 31 - Advertising shifted from selling product qualities to selling user identity
#expands(0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 550 - Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves
#expands(0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213 - Product differentiation in mass culture functions as consumer classification, not real variety.
#expands(0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 95 - Informed consumers are more easily exploited by the market
#corroborates(0.70) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 126