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Mm hmm. From Gainesville, Florida. Yeah, hello, I'm Mike Cannon. And this is conversation. Well, before Thanksgiving, Christmas decorations were going up in stores throughout balmy Florida. As the retail marketing experts began targeting you and me for holiday sales. And in the males, Yuletide colours festoon the covers of catalogs from horse Shal, trifles, Neiman Marcus and Harry and David.

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Of course, it's exciting to see all the things that money can buy. But knowing in the memory are the words of ST Augustine in the fifth century, when he said after visiting a North African bazaar how comforting it is to know how many things there are of which I have no need not to do the good Saint injustice.

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But perhaps even he might have been persuaded to buy something neither he nor anyone else really needed had he fallen under the sway of today's marketing strategists. They've got our number, I'm afraid how they got it and what they're doing with it will be the subject of this conversation when I return in a moment.

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Mhm. My guest on this conversation is John H. Pharisee, a professor of marketing and assistant dean of the College of Business Administration in the University of Florida. Jack. Welcome to conversations. Delighted to be here, Jack. I don't want to put you on the spot. As the defender of marketing, I know that you have to stand up for your discipline, but I want you to be honest, too.

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Don't you really have our number? Oh, no, no. I think there are a lot of things that that marketers do that are not defensible. Marketing is a function within society is necessary. All societies have some kind of a marketing operation they go through. No, I think merchants would love to have your number might, but I don't think most of them do.

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Uh, would have much less advertising if we knew exactly how to do it and how to target everybody. You don't think that marketing is becoming so sophisticated that it knows who is buying what at what age is and under what circumstances and what seasons Why, for example, is the Christmas season getting earlier and earlier and earlier every year?

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Is it simply because it's a big sales period, or is it because something is happening to us? Uh, middle aged types that they're zeroing in on. I think it's something happening to us middle aged types. I think it just seems like it's getting earlier and earlier every year.

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No, I think they start just about the same time. You have to remember that for many merchants, not all of them. But for many merchants, especially those who depend on the gift trade, the biggest time of the year is that first day after Thanksgiving to Christmas.

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One of the determining factors here is when is the first in November? If it's on a Thursday, then the fourth Thursday, which is Thanksgiving, is going to come early, and we'll give you a long time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. However, if it comes late, you're gonna have a shorter time.

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Believe it or not, retail sales depend heavily on when Thanksgiving falls in November. Number two merchants would like to get to another store early for a number of reasons. One stories are going to get terribly crowded at Thanksgiving, uh, to they'd like to know what it is you're looking for this year.

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They need some signals for you as to what's going to be hot. What should they start? Reordering immediately? I hate to tell you this. I haven't done any Christmas shopping yet myself. You mean you don't have your E T doll or your video game? I'm an ex department store buyer.

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That's how I started out in the retail business and marketing itself. I found that I did my Christmas shopping at four o'clock on Christmas Eve when the store closed when you put in 8200 hours a week. And frankly, it's not rare for retailers at that time of the year.

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That's when the money is coming in. That's when you get the shop is right at the last minute. Well, Jack, what is the difference between, uh, marketer or a marketing expert on the one hand and, um, a seller and an advertiser on the other? What I'm sure there's a distinction there, which I don't know.

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Marketing is the umbrella. Sales and advertising are under it. Let's take marketing on two ways. One is macro marketing marketing within society. It's how society meets its needs for physical material goods over a period of time. On a micro level, it's how some particular firm determines what it's going to make, decides how to distribute to consumers what channels of distribution, what kinds of promotion or communication techniques it's going to use.

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That's what I define as micro marketing. Uh, well, most of us talk about marketing. We're really talking about individual firms. We talk about micro marketing. No, there's this whole problem of how we meet the needs of everybody within the society. When I talk about the marketers having our number, I think in particular of those catalogs that come flooding in the males.

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If you buy something one time from one of those companies, it seems that every other company gets your name on a list as a likely what pigeon is that the word you can use picture. And I find those catalogs of delight. I read them from end to end, and I am like, ST Augustine.

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I find incredibly useless things that I have no interest in. Uh, that's one thing to make the world go around is that we all have different needs. We all have different wants, and they're all catered to somewhere in here. I have a catalog. I like looking through them.

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To whom am I kidding? I get a kick out of looking at these things for example here. This is the Sharper Image catalog that came in a short while ago, and it offers me desktop clock that monitors every beat of my heart. Uh, this really is something that I've been lusting after.

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It comes at $99. Now, I don't know if I can put together that much money in these hard times, but perhaps I can buy a high performance pillow. Every detail found on the original BMW 33. 20 I and Porsche 9 30. Turbo has been carefully preserved in these pillows.

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$39 over here is very exciting ad experience. The excitement and power of a space age crossbow. This is also something I've been wanting. $229. 6. 50 shipping charges. Uh, there are people who buy these things, Jack. Now, uh, some that. That's why I say, uh, they've got our number.

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They don't take that expensive picture and put it in there for nothing. I still think the most What I thought was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen was the electric toothbrush. I thought it was a surefire failure. Uh, turned out to be big.

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The electric knife is another example. I thought it was silly. Um, I think a lot of these products are going to fail. Of course, there's no long term interest in them. Uh, some of them will be very successful things you and I would never want things you might want I might not care for at all.

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Actually, I saw a story in The New York Times last week about a store in Manhattan that is selling out bizarre electrical items of exactly this sort, uh, electric this, and electronic that. And apparently the people who market these kinds of things have found out that the American public is ready to spring.

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I talked to a young man today who told me. He tells me that he comes from an electronic hustle. Everything's electronic. They have things to turn the lights on. They have microwave ovens. They have computer games and video cassette recorders. I don't have any of those things, but they're quite delighted with the way they left.

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There's a light switch in this particular catalogue, which requires no manual touch at all. You simply walk in the room and say lights, please or whistle and the lights go on it can be kind of delightful. Why don't you be the first on your block to have one of those jobs on my block there?

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Probably a number of people who have things like this much. Oh, you live in a very high roller neighborhood. I still don't understand, though. What's the difference between marketing and selling and advertising? It all seems to go together. It all goes together. Ideally, marketing is concerned with what kind of goods to people want, and that involves marketing research.

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For some people think marketing is once they wanted. The question is, how are you going to get it to them? Then how are you going to advertise and how are you going to sell? Certainly, advertising in personal selling is inseparable from marketing. Necessary part. Uh, there's always been communication.

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Now the biggest criticism that has been made against marketing in my lifetime has been that people like you, Jack, make us buy things that we don't need and don't want. What's your response to to that criticism? I'm gonna put you on the spot. After all, you're a professor of marketing.

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Why on earth would you buy something you don't need or you don't want because you have persuaded me. I need you. Want it? Oh, no, no, no. I don't think I don't think people can turn over control of themselves to somebody else. I don't think you blame somebody else for what you do.

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I think we're all pretty much in control of ourselves now. Obviously, there are problems like this, um, three dimensional television. Now it's claiming we know what's coming. There are several systems that are, at least in laboratory testing. Now, however, consumers are flooding into stores saying I want three dimensional television because we don't know such a thing exists.

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We didn't go looking for video games before somebody invented get video games. Of course, there is no demand for that. There is a demand for recreation. There is a demand for status. Uh, there is a demand for anything that might relieve me of boredom. Products like this may fill this need.

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The demand is not so much for these products, but what they can give you. Mm. Yes. I can convince you that this product is going to give you status or relieve your boredom. Then you will watch the product. I think of a statistic that I saw in the press today.

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The state of Washington has an 11.4 unemployment rate, and yet retail sales are substantially above last year's in the city of Seattle. How do we explain something like that? It appears that is happening pretty much over all over the country that the people who have money, the people who are employed and especially the upper middle class, spending quite heavily.

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There are other people who are really getting hurt. I think one of the difficult things always for us is to look at people who aren't fortunate and look in this country and see the level at which we consume. Uh, by the way, some of its necessary, Uh, if people didn't consume you and I wouldn't have jobs, that's what we're producing.

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Your job is your right to put a claim on society for goods and Services. I'm not sure what's happening in Seattle. Uh, it does seem that people are not going into long term debt as much as they used to, so they're not buying things like cars or they're making the very heavy monthly payments.

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Uh, they're buying more short term things, things they can pay for quite quickly without long term involvement. Just the amount of money that has been diverted out of the automobile industry in the last couple of years is astonishing. That money is going somewhere. It's either going into savings or it's going into short term purchases, something that you don't have to put on the charge character.

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You mentioned cars. Do we Americans have a tendency to purchase style over substance? The automobile industry certainly thought so in this country. Um, I heard someone mentioned the other day that we marketed the wrong cars, and I don't think there's any question that we did. And the Japanese just came in with quality and won the market away.

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That's not quite true. The Japanese are marvelous marketers. I don't think most people are aware that in the 1960 Toyota came into this country with a car called delightfully the Toil Pet. It was built like a vault. It looked like a vault drove like a vault.

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It was not an attractive car, and they pulled it out of the market. After almost a year of disastrous sales, they went back to Japan. They sent market research teams over, and they started trying to find out what American Sumers really wanted when they knew they came back with their cars.

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They've done a marvelous job of marketing, most of which, by the way, they've learned from us, yes, and they have design firms in California, which assist them in devising automobiles that will satisfy the American public, even though they are reduced in size. The Kelty design firm is Toyota's design firm out in California, and their cars are literally designed in this country.

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Well, the the quality of the product is what sold the product. It appears the fit and the finish of Japanese cars so impressed buyers and those who had Japanese cars over a long length of years and could testify to their friends. Hey, this is a quality product that the Japanese probably did not have to go in for some of the marketing techniques that were endemic to American industry.

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And yet, uh, I I opened magazines and I watch television, and I see advertisements all over the place. For Japanese automobiles, the best marketing technique is obviously to give consumers what they want. I mean, ideally, you would like to eliminate the need for for selling or for advertising that you targeted people so well that none of that was necessary.

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I don't think we're ever going to get there. Um, the Japanese gave people what they wanted. That to me is ideal sorts of marketing. I think the American industry had deluded itself into believing that what they were making was what people wanted, however, was very much high profits.

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They make more on big cars and expensive cars, and then they make on small, inexpensive cars. Uh, that the flash that they were trying to sell, changing every year they thought was working and truth. When the American Sumer was given an option, they moved towards high quality cars.

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Jack, I want to ask about something that's new in the store is not this year, but in the it seems, over the past half decade or a decade at most. And that is, uh, private brands and generic brands. Could we take those and ask about their quality vis a vis the more common brands that we're accustomed to buying history lesson?

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All right. First we started off, uh, with wholesalers. Wholesalers really dominated manufacturers didn't have much money nor did retailers. Most brands at one time were wholesaler brands, uh, with the development of national media, primarily by the way magazines, uh, some firms Steinway pianos, Hershey chocolate found that they could develop national markets and they could communicate directly with the consumer and say, If you buy my national brand, you'll be more satisfied than if you buy the one the wholesalers offering.

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We then went to national brands. We now have strong stores firms like Sears, Kmart developing, which are now coming up with their own brands. They set the specifications, their national firms. They command a large audience. They promote these. These are the so called store brands. Store brands have been taking a bigger and bigger piece of the pie.

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Uh, from the national brands. Uh, they tend to be good byes. Um, there everybody is good in many cases, as the national brands. Sometimes they even made by the same firms. Generic brands are something a little different. They came to us primarily from France. Uh, the generic brand is there's no name at all.

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The product is, says tomatoes or green beans or soap, and they're usually sort of beige containers with brown writing on it. They tend to be fairly inexpensive. What you're putting your faith in there is at the store wooden products. Sure, the store wouldn't buy it unless it was at least an adequate product.

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Lots of times, these products are very good, especially if you're using them in casseroles or stews. Or you're stewing tomatoes and you're whipping them to a pulp where they wouldn't be recognisable anyway. You don't necessarily need a fancy grade. A lot of people are terribly fussy about what they eat.

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By the way, I think a lot of people who otherwise are very confident about their independence of thought and action worry that they are being bamboozled by advertisers, if not subliminal advertising, that something over it that they don't quite catch and persuades them to do something which otherwise they would not, and particular in particular, they worry about deceptive advertising.

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How deceptive is advertising in your experience? It certainly is deceptive advertising. I think all of us I've certainly been taken, and I can't imagine most other people have. It makes you feel a little foolish on it happens. I don't think it's happened to me a lot when you start talking about retailers, especially in a community like this.

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Retailers are an integral part of our community. They tend to treat people in the city very squarely. They're good moral people, just like anybody else. Um, it's in larger cities where you get into much more impersonal relationships that retailers start to do nasty things. Let's take a perfect example, which is the so called bait and switch where a product is advertised a refrigerator at a very low price.

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And when you go to buy it, they say, We're out so well. I just saw the ad this morning while we sold them out and you wouldn't want it. I once was told by a washer salesman that the washing machine only used cold water and that hot water would melt the pipes inside.

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Obviously, he's trying desperately not to sell the product that's advertised, and he is trying to move me to another product to higher level product. There's nothing wrong with trying to trade somebody up, but when you refuse to sell that advertised product that's illegal. It's called bait and switch.

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It does happen, bait and switch, and that's different from a loss leader, which is a quality product sold at a very low price to get the person in the store loss leaders where you're trying to build store traffic and you sell something very inexpensively and people come in and once they're there, so pick up other items.

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Bait and switch is where you offer something you really have no intention of selling. When this consumer comes into the store, you try and move them up to a more expensive and, by the way, more profitable items. Good advice for our viewers as it is for me.

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By the way, you do something with students that I've never seen but heard about something with cooked bottles. What is that all about? You? I didn't bring it. You know, I was tempted before I came to bring a couple of glasses and a couple of bottles of coke, one of the points I try and make in my classes.

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A lot of what we consider perception that we can tell the difference between products really isn't true. Uh, and I explained to students they can't tell the difference between Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola and R C, at which point, by the way they get very upset with me and they say they can and I bring out the bottles and the glasses and we tested.

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We do about chance. We don't do really any better than that. Um, there's almost always one student who can identify all three some of the times they can get Coca Cola. Lots of confusion between Pepsi Cola and R C Cola. It's hard. It's very difficult when we're done with it and they now begin to believe, Well, it's harder than they thought it was.

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I mentioned that they can't consistently tell the difference between seven up and Coca Cola and seven up in Coca Cola. Come on, Jack. It causes outrage. Well, I can hear it now. Who? His? So far this semester, I've pulled it off twice. What I do on individual student?

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Yes, I give a student. I have two glasses. They get five tries. You'd be amazed what carbonation and all that sugar does to your taste buds. And by about the third time, you become thoroughly confused as to what it is you're actually tasting. Oh, amazing. All of us have had the experience where you've go to a party and you have a drink and pick up the wrong drink.

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Don't even notice it for a while, even though you're drinking an entirely different mix from somebody else, you ordered bourbon, and that's what you started. And this is Scotch. But for someone noticed, doesn't register. Taste buds go dull after a while. It's an amazing thing to watch.

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It constantly surprises me. I've done it twice a semester, and both times it actually worked that by the fifth time they became confused and called Coca Cola seven up. Now, what is the lesson that your conclusion that you draw from that? The lesson is we're probably not as smart as we think that we do develop brand preferences, which probably don't have any real base?

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In reality, I don't mean they are important to us one of the ways we have to sort through a very complicated world. If you went into a store and had no brand preferences and we're going to buy dinner, you could spend hours and hours in that store trying to pick things out and trying to make your decisions developing brand preferences as a way of simplifying our lives and making our life much easier to deal with, reducing what are fairly complicated decisions down into very simple decisions.

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Always by this brand, I never buy that brand. I want to ask a question about brands in a moment. But first, uh, whereas pop drinkers may not be all that discriminating in their tastes and ultimately, when put to the test and not tell the difference between Coke and, uh seven up or whatever, beer drinkers seemed to be a little bit more perceptive.

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Otherwise, how account for the decline of slits beer when it changed its formula and a longtime slits devotees moved on Mass away from that brew to other brands. There's no question that took place. Apparently, the change in the slits formula was substantial. It was quite noticeable, however, with most premium beers.

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Uh, they're very similar. Most people cannot distinguish. Most people can tell premium beer from a non premium beer but have a great deal of difficulty distinguishing among the premium beers. Apparently, in the Schlitz case, they changed the brew enough, so it moved it out of that great middle.

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That is, their most brewers appear to be aiming at approximately the same audience. Uh, I don't drink enough beer so I can tell the difference. I have lying beer bottles up. We've, by the way, done this. One with students to, they seem, can't seem to be able to sort them out at all.

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I understand that it has been done with brewers, and the Brewers have a terrible time distinguishing between between one beer and another bear. I heard once, and I'm sure somebody will call me and tell me I'm an error, that the only difference difference in beers is the water that the process is pretty much the same, allowing for the fact.

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Of course, there's a that there's a difference between a full bodied beer and a light beer. But you take full bodied beers. They're pretty much the same. The brewing process is is identical, and only the source of water makes the difference in the taste. It appears to me that most brewers do tend to aim at the same audience.

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I would think you could very beer if you chose to. In the case of Schlitz, they chose to. It was a serious mistake. If you've been in Germany, you know that German beers can be very heavy in the English beers can be very sharp. You can certainly vary the product.

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I don't think most brewers are. I think we're all aiming at that same sort of light market. People who don't want a heavy beer but at least want a little bit of Tang. Let's get away from here. I don't know anything about brewing, and I really don't know that much either about brands, But I sure know a lot about impulse buying.

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I go into a store and I see something that's attractively packaged. The retail store owner or salesman has put it in a place that is likely to attract my gaze. And I picked the thing up saying, Hey, we need one of these at home and I'm wondering if impulse buying has not taken people away from brands where their loyalties were previously fixed.

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Um, I think that's possible. New packaging Being responsible. You may not know a lot about brewing. I don't think I know a lot about impulse buying, something I just simply don't do. I'm probably one of the slowest shoppers in the world. It's not something I enjoy.

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I like stores, but I don't like shopping, um, at least at the time that you see that product, it somehow fulfil some sort of a need for you. Very often, women will go to the store with a rough idea of what they want, but they also use the store is sort of a giant shopping list as they go through and they go up the detergent aisle, they realize that they're out of detergent.

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What might appear to you to be an impulse said, is it's not written on a list may indeed be a fairly carefully planned purchase that she gets a reminder that she's out of detergent. Uh, but she does need detergent. Do you really do a lot of impulse shopping?

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Well, no, not a lot. Only every time I go to this story and usually it's for something like, Well, gosh, now down the line, we're gonna need this. So I pick it up My promise. Candy bars at the minute market. I I've always and it doesn't help me at all.

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I always pick up an extra candy bar in the minute market. It's really not an impulse. I think it's a pattern I've gotten into, um, one of the things that goods Will will set off some kind of a trigger. They'll remind you that you need something.

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You go through a store and see something, and you'll think I've really wanted something like that, and there it is and you'll pick it up. I don't think that people are as impulsive as it looks. I think it appears that way. But most of the things you buy, you've given some thought to.

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At some point, somewhere along the line you mentioned, uh, toward the start of the conversation, Jack, that you had no question about the general morality of advertisers. They're very good folk, by and large, most of them. But looking at the whole marketing process, does it tend to induce a certain shady ethics in in the fact that there was so much pressure to sell to make quotas in order to get a product before people?

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And so far, I think the pressure on advertisers must be tremendous. Uh, that someone once said that you can only feel full people once, but you're talking about 250 million people, and if you could fool them at a dollar apiece, you're pretty well set for the rest of your life.

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Um, there must be just tremendous pressures on people to stress the truth. It's one of the reasons I think people rely on national advertisers because they feel the national advertiser has a reputation to protect. I think it's one of the reasons we feel good about dealing with local merchants because local restaurants are our friends and our neighbors, and we feel pretty good about that.

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They want us to return to their stories right. We want to reduce risk by making them at least partially dependent upon us. And by being honest with us, that's one of the ways they do it. I really don't think that advertisers are more dishonest than anybody else, But I do think the pressures and the temptations are there.

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Of course. Now a final Christmas tip to our viewers. What do you give to the person who has everything? Um, nobody has everything. Everybody needs something. Let's take a look. Consumables. A bottle of wine. Uh, something you made yourself a nice dessert. One of those marvelous fruit cakes that are available, Um, things that take care of a hobby.

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Golf balls, golf clubs. If he does nothing but sit and watch television all night. That's fine. You can go get TV guide for him. A useful present. Books Nobody ever has too many books, magazines, subscriptions. There are all sorts of reasonably creative and, by the way, very reasonably priced things that you can buy primarily the consumables.

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The ones that you you can never have enough of because you're going to eat it next week or drink it next month. Great advice, Jack. And to our viewers, let me say, remember, you heard it first. Here, consumables as the best present for the person who has everything.

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Thank you, Jack, for being with me on conversation to talk about marketing and other things besides Mike. I appreciate it. Thank you. Mm. Thank you. Mm hmm.