User:Katiepierce14/sandbox

Psychological Effects of Mass Marketing
Mass marketing can have effects on people’s psychological beliefs of themselves. One of these effects, is the proliferation of eating disorders. Eating disorders are influenced by mass marketing due to all the weight loss and dieting plans that are exposed to everyone but the ones that are affected the most by these efforts are females. “The food, diet, and fitness industries, aided by the media, espouse the message that independence for women in general, means self-improvement, self-control, and that it is the women's responsibility to achieve the ultra-slender body ideal”.

Mass marketing has psychological effects because the marketers themselves have to learn about their target market and study them. They do this by having people fill out surveys that answer specific questions, so they have the information they need to best target their potential customers. Persuasion is a very common tactic for mass marketing. This is because persuasion is about manipulating the customer into believing they need or want the product being marketed. In a study done by Friestad and Wright they found that marketing has the most effect on peoples psychological behaviors if it they are necessity, influence, noticeability, and effectiveness.

Advertisements change greatly depending who their target audience is, among gender, age, passions, and others. In an episode of the podcast Hidden Brains, they explain the different ideas of psychological effects that come from advertising. An example given is mouth wash. Before the 1920s this product was nonexistent. People did not think about whether their breath was bad or not, but once this product was released, people jumped on the idea of never having bad breath. Another example was with the company Lucky Strip. They are a cigarette company that also used psychological manipulation to make people buy their products. Years ago females were looked poorly upon if they were smoking a cigarette. Lucky Strip took this and made a slogan, “torches of freedom”. Slogans can have huge effects on minds and on what attracts people. This one in particular shows a sense of freedom and independence for women. By attaching this slogan, they sold the idea of freedom with their cigarettes.