[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Don't blame marketing, blame capitalism.

I can blame both, as well as the underlying sociopathic mechanisms that the modern understanding of the terms necessitate.

If I am not mistaken what you are describing is market research, not marketing. Marketing is, in practice if not theory, about invasion of attention and manipulation. If marketing were not these things then companies would be content to have their products discovered in catalogs and store shelves where interested parties willing to devote attention to such things would readily find them.