Are wants created?

Advertising cannot be blamed for all our “foolish” consumption. The dynamics of personality structure and social interactions give rise to drives and needs that operate in any economic context. Even members of the most primitive tribes, uncontaminated by the seductions of advertising, adorned themselves with rings, bracelets, and pendants. Furthermore, advertising has grown to massive proportions only in the last three decades, but regular increases in consumption spending have taken place throughout recorded history. Accordingly, it is a mistake to attribute the growth of consumption to the persuasions of advertising.

This is not to say that advertising has necessarily made us happier or directed consumption into preferred channels. Although advertising cannot be changed with creating our needs, it does provide specific (if not necessarily correct) outlets for satisfying those needs. The objective of all advertising is to alter the choice we make. Just as product images are used to attract us to particular commodities, so are pictures of hungry, ill-clothed children used to persuade us to give money to charity. In the same way, public-relations gimmicks are employed to sway out votes for public servants. In the case of consumer products, advertising seeks to increase tastes for particular goods and services and therewith our willingness to pay. A successful advertising campaign is one that shifts the demand curve to the right, including consumers to increase their purchases of a product at every price. Advertising may also make the demand curve less elastic, thus reducing consumer responses to price increases. But influencing our choices in this way, advertising alters the distribution of our consumption expenditures, if not their level.