Euvoluntary Marketing Part 1 of 4: Product

Brock C.: "What's the Euvoluntary view on marketing practices that take advantage of known but unconscious heuristics the brain uses?"

Challenge accepted. This is a post in four parts, each installment dealing with one aspect of marketing.

First, a clarification. I think when many people hear the word "marketing", they think "advertising". To be sure, advertising is a function of marketing, but it ain't the whole enchilada. The marketing apparatus of a firm answers at a minimum the following questions:

1. What do we produce?
2. How much do we ask?
3. To whom do we sell?
4. Where do we sell it?

These are the 4 P's of marketing: product, price, promotion and place [location]. Of course, there are other models of how marketing works, but the idea is that marketing department exist to match the wants of consumers with the capabilities of producers. 

And vice-versa. 

Which is where the rub is for many folks. Drumming up demand where none existed before: isn't that predatory? You're bilking people out of their had earned cash for something they've gotten along without perfectly well their whole lives! How can it possibly be that developing new products is euvoluntary knowing full well that humans have a proclivity towards novelty? 

Here's how I see it: try to think in terms of underlying, personal, subjective value. Consider two people, Angela and Bart. Angela is a novophile: she likes new things independent of their instrumental value. She bought a CD player in 1982 and a betamax player in 1975. What appeals to her is the novelty. Contrarily, Bart is a stodgy late adopter. He still has a land line in his home and uses paper boarding passes at the airport. NB: there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Angela gives up some certainty for the privilege of being an early adopter (she ends up owning a small pile of movies on dead beta tape), and Bart is stuck with the hassle of standing in insufferable lines at the airport because he's too stubborn to change.

But even if Angela believes Bart to be irrational, she'd be wise to conclude that forcing Bart to hop on the novelty train would not necessarily make him better off. Similarly, Bart knows that Angela's silly heuristic of "it's new, I have to have it" is wasteful more often than not, but he also knows that he is in no position to exercise the virtues of temperance and prudence on her behalf. He might be worried if the costs of her intemperance are made public, but then it becomes a matter of analyzing the institutions that make private costs public, not so much the pseudo-problem of accidental, innocent regret.

So is product innovation euvoluntary? Do we really need a hundred different kinds of toothpaste? Consider your cost accounting. If you don't use but one type of toothpaste, ask yourself if the extra burden imposed on you for having to sort through the choices is really so awful that you'd be willing to deny others the opportunity to find a product that truly appeals to them. 

Thankfully, the answer in most market settings is "no, it's not that much trouble." It's mostly just in politics that choice sets are curtailed by the use of force.

Differential Non-Euvoluntarity in Schelling Decisions

I have to confess to what I gather is called "privilege". I'm a boring suburban white dad. I have a desk job I enjoy. I commute. I have a mortgage, a pretty good education, a lovely wife, a cute-as-a-button daughter, and a modest collection of threadbare socks. I haven't been in a fistfight since 6th grade, I've only been mugged once, and the only time I've been on the receiving end of purposeful gunfire was in (believe it or not) Florida two decades ago. Being a married, middle-aged white male in the modern secular West means I totally won the historical lottery.

Winning this lottery means that I'm vulnerable to charges of arrogance when I try my hand at Smithian sympathy applied to topics outside my ken. I've never been arrested on possession charges, so who am I to discuss the plight of the casualties in the War on American Minorities? Well, at the risk of taking off my boots to reveal feet of clay, I'd like to consider BATNA disparity applied to the Schelling Effect. I'm pretty much guaranteed to never be subjected to routine street harassment, so is the higher opportunity cost faced by my female reader(s?) cause for moral grievance?

Let's ask PJS.

@amelapay: "headphones are the utilitarian solution to street harassment. they get to have their uncivilized outbursts, but you don't hear a thing."

See these? Ram Jam cranked to 11 right now. More Than A Feeling is up next. Jay-Z later.

Hey baby, how bout you and me head back to Mos Eisley for some blue milk? I got a metal bikini that would look great on you.

@adamgurri: You know, princess, "Tasers are the deontological solution." If Kant taught us anything, there's a categorical imperative to enforce social norms. Escaping the Hobbesian concrete jungle where dreams are made of means being a bit of a scoundrel from time to time.

Artoo, you know what I'm talking about, right?

@DrPhilofEconomi: "An intimidating dog is the eudaimonic solution."

Maybe it's time to swap your pocket pooches for a Rottweiler. The Big Apple surely has a rescue shelter or two with burly dogs in need of some kindly foster care. Arete means that you can care for a critter in need of love while you help make the NYC streets a more civilized place to walk. Everyone wins and you don't have to commit assault to get there.


If these comments weren't in jest, I think this'd count as "mansplaining". The economist would be quick to point out that the costs of street harassment are sunk in the initial calculus. Pamela is no dummy. She knows right well that catcalling and rubbernecking is part of the New York life and she decided to live there anyway.

But the economic efficiency argument falls flat, even to me. There's an unjust transfer of PJS's peace of mind to satisfy... well, I don't claim to understand the motivations of hooting, braying, honking, juvenile males. Smithian sympathy goes only so far. Catcalls aren't about picking up chicks (apologies, Robin H.). Point is, there's an uncompensated exchange in there. The benefit roguish men get from hollering noxious, unwanted sentiments at passersby surely counts as psychic pollution. Right?

But the thing that got me thinking was this. This speaks to my insularity, but I hadn't even heard of "male gaze" until relatively recently. To me, there's a pretty significant difference between a man appreciating a beautiful woman on the one hand and catcalling on the other. But that's to me. I'm willing to entertain the idea that I'm wrong about that. Leering and ogling is neither frotteurism nor lewd remarks, but the wispy boundaries of aggression here are at least plausibly contentious. Can staring be psychic pollution?

The Coasean solution strikes me as eminently sensible. Manners are as good as gold. You don't have to be a blue-blood aristocrat to afford everyone else a de minimus parcel of respect and to handle offenses with tact and dignity. If you find yourself compelled to check an attractive woman out, I assure you it's not difficult to do so with discretion. Appreciating beauty need not cause distress. And for the other side of the exchange, I'm afraid I'm at a loss there. Mrs. Wilson is exceptionally good at deflecting unwanted attention, but I never get to see her razor wit at work. No one catcalls her in my presence. Sorry. But not really, since if you came to EE looking for tips on how to handle street harassment, you've got more serious problems than I can help with.

Anyway, in a static sense, there's a gender asymmetry in where to settle. In a dynamic sense, narrowing the BATNA disparity will take strength of character and a bit of creativity. The institutions that support street harassment are not euvoluntary, so finding and securing a better, emergent equilibrium can't be hand-waved (or gavel-banged) away easily.

Toward a Tactical Neural Implant

Lynne Kiesling has a new paper out on the links between Adam Smith and neuroscience. Consider the EE implications of undisciplined sympathy. An outside observer might see a trade occurring and feel sympathy for the plight of the disadvantaged partner, probably because of lousy outside alternatives. If Kiesling is right (and I suspect she is), the Smithian sympathetic response is hard-wired into our brains and the remaining choice is how to channel that response--how to interpret our knee-jerk sympathy.

Here at EE, we urge caution and circumspection. Careful consideration ought be given the likely consequences of interference into voluntary transactions. This is not to say that we cannot or should never interfere, but that there should be a presumption of rational agency in the absence of coercion and that just because some people have crappy alternatives is no reason to force them away from taking steps to improve their welfare. We (and by 'we', I am brashly co-opting the opinions of my gracious host) advocate not letting your sympathy get the better of you. If your brain is tricking you into being stupid, turn the tables and train your brain not to leap to conclusions. Master your neural network.

And do read Lynne's paper. Marvelously fascinating stuff.

Apologies (again) to B. Leeb and R. Fulber.