Advertising Kenneth Galbraith Analysis

Kenneth Galbraith essay articulates the integration of advertisement, salesmanship, production, consumption, and people's happiness. Galbraith argued that advertising and the sales promotion activities of firms create wants for people, which makes them consume more without making them better off, partly, because their wants were artificially created—hence, advertising convinces people that they need things that they don’t really need, by selling them a conceptualization of what happiness is. The essay implies that advertisement plays a significant role in how our reality is created and shaped, that wants, only create more wants—as well as, how people become dependent on the production of things in order to fill voids that they themselves have created. He explains how “one man’s consumption becomes his neighbor’s wish.” Therefore the more wants that has been satisfied the more are being created, he says that these wants are desires,

“Needs” normally provide more identifiable patterns, making the information regarding its patterns easier to analyze. A want is more of a desire, which is limitless and easily targeted. It is the things that a person would buy if money was not an option. Wants are often used to filled voids, or give social satisfactions, while needs are things required similarly by each person. Understanding that idea, it’s been shown that wants are more profitable because wants provide an opportunity to not only create new wants, but to also have a larger change in price, due to the desire (demand) for it. Although, needs can be seen as more of a safe, when it comes to wants, if a want is in high demand, people are willing to pay more for it, yet the price of production most often remains the same. When the demand increases, the price will increase and the wanted item becomes more profitable to