TRios_Zen said:
Sorry I couldn't respond sooner, work got in the way! I enjoy even-minded debate and as you seem willing, I'll respond to your points. 1) I did read your original post and I think this is the only point we completely disagree on; the lack of advertising a competitors product is not tantamount to deception, and only the most simple minded of viewers would believe this to be some claim of exclusivity. 2) I agree that Corporate America will go where the consumers are, but American consumers are not nationalistic. Our trade deficit is one of the largest in the world... foreign cars dominate sales, consumer electronics brands are all foreign as well. To some extent I agree with others: the American market was Sony's for the taking...if they had not tried to shove an overpriced piece of hardware through to the market this generation would be vastly different. As it is, the Wii (which dominates American hardware sales) and the 360 offered cheaper, viable alternatives. This has nothing to do with American consumers wanting to buy American products. 3) I did not mean to insult your studies: as one who has pursued higher education, I absolutely underdstand the value of academia. I only offer this: look at the UK and use your marketing knowledge to assess how you would have to tailor a message differently to folks from say Glassgow versus Londonites. It would be hard for you to generalize anything about British people that would apply to absolutely everyone. The US has roughly 30 times the land mass and 4 times the number of people. Do you honestly think you could generalize how the media would affect us all? I live in Texas and am innundated with the same media, laws, and politics of the rest of America and yet I still often wonder what the hell my Boston colleagues are thinking! |
As a federal nation there will always be the differences between states, right wing in one state is left wing in another, this can lead to different business moves, in the UK this is not so much the case due to centralisation of government and television, the only differences you would have to make when marketing is the accent of the person in the advert, generally there is very little difference when it comes to business, alot of our differences are purely cultural.
You have to remember that the size of your home state of Texas is close to three times the size of the UK and hundereds of times the size of my home city, this makes it both harder and easier to generalise, on the one hand, you have a much larger number of people who would be taken in by such advertising and on the other hand you have a larger number who would not. Someone from the outside looking in may get the wrong idea when they see consumerism in action.
But the same thing must happen between states, where one state may be full of people who fall for advertising, there may be another that generally does not, therefore you can gather biased views simply by visiting the wrong state.
"Lack of advertising a competitors product is not tantamount to deception" as classic trait of the devoutly capitalist system in America, successive socialist waves in the UK has eroded much of this mentality it seems, this coming from someone who is considered a right wing capitalist in the UK but a bleeding heart liberal in the US.
I personally believe it is Sony's fault for not counter advertising, however, I still think that the advertisement is misleading.