The Psychology behind Marketing

           There are many age-old pairs that go hand in hand such as Sonny and Cher, thunder and lightning, doctors and nurses, and peanut butter and jelly. One pair that’s very important, yet doesn’t usually come to mind for most people is marketing and psychology. Behind every successful marketing campaign and advertisement is a lot of psychological research.

          

 By including psychologists in the creation of advertisements, marketing companies see much more success. Over the years, psychologists have implemented the idea of affective conditioning into ads and commercials. With affective conditioning, the ad shows the product along with a bunch of things that are proven to make us feel good, such as sunshine, babies, people laughing, and beautiful scenery. Subconsciously, we associate this product with being happy and feeling good, making us much more likely to buy the product, even if it’s not something we really think we need. A study done by two psychologists, Melanie Dempsey and Andrew Mitchell, showed a group of people two different ads for pens. Ad A talked about many more beneficial qualities of their pen than did Ad B, but in Ad B, they showed the pen being associated with different positive items. 70-80% of the people tested said that they preferred the pen in Ad B, showing that people will prefer a pleasant commercial and a product that makes them feel happy over a product that has better attributes.

            

        
           After researching this topic, I felt a little weird about the fact that these companies are getting their product into our brain with psychological tactics. Do I actually like the things I like because I like them, or because affective conditioning is causing me to like them? It’s a strange concept to think about, and there’s no denying that psychology is responsible for the success of advertising in our world today. 


By: Rachel Seyfarth

Sources:

Markham, Art, Ph.D. "What Does Advertising Do?" Psychology Today. N.p., 30 Aug. 2010. Web. 08 Apr. 2016.

"8 Things a School Psychologist Would Never Say to You." Pscyh2Go. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2016.