I think it's relatively uncontroversial that advertising is a "strategy" for either low quality, not needed, or undifferentiated offerings, and that when looking at how a company goes to market, there is a choice of putting $ into advertising or into a better product.
I generally use advertising as a proxy for inverse utility. It would definitely be better to have more products that targeted being good, as opposed to ones that target influencing people to buy them.
>I think it's relatively uncontroversial that advertising is a "strategy" for either low quality, not needed, or undifferentiated offerings, and that when looking at how a company goes to market, there is a choice of putting $ into advertising or into a better product.
You mean like iPhones? Because Apple certainly advertises.
I'm not sure your statement applies broadly to automobile advertising either.
Why? Can you explain that thought process? i.e. everything should be niche? Like toothpaste for devops engineers who want their teeth to grow in the dark when they are around 2 or more wifi networks?
My thought process is that I personally would like to see more products with a higher focus on being good for a smaller group of people, rather than cheaper and /or worse but aimed at a huge audience. [0]
Focusing on delivering a good product to a smaller audience allows you to have tighter feedback loops and create more useful iterations because of that. You can also usually charge more. Personally, there are a lot of product spaces that I currently prefer or would prefer spending more for higher quality. But I don't always get that option due to the obsession with casting a wide net, as it were.
Do I expect this to happen organically? No, market forces seem to heavily incentivize races to the bottom.
[0]: NB my use of relative statements and not absolutes. Going from one extreme to the other likely won't produce a net positive.
I generally use advertising as a proxy for inverse utility. It would definitely be better to have more products that targeted being good, as opposed to ones that target influencing people to buy them.