Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2003-12-07 04:46 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2003-12-07 04:46 pm
Sales tactics, obnoxious
I dislike sales tactics that presuppose that what they're selling, I want or need.
I mean, when advertisements are mass-distributed, such as TV commercials, yes, it's one thing, if it's a broad enough market. Everybody needs food. Everybody needs clothing. Everybody does not need a computer. It's what drives the consumer culture, instilling a false sense of need for the product in the consumer, but I don't care for it; it's the antithesis of what I was raised on. But it's tolerable.
What personally offends me is the one-on-one sales pitches, directed by a human specifically to me, that presupposes that I use the kinds of goods and/or services that they are talking about, and thus it's only their job to convince me that theirs is better than all the rest, or that I simply can't live without it being done in the fashion that they, and only they, can do things.
There was that magazine salesguy. He was trying to convince me that I needed a magazine, because he had a magazine, somewhere, that would cater to my interests, fill a need that was not being met. In fact, that was not the case. I already had a computer magazine, and I follow the news online. I read books from libraries; I don't read magazines about reading. I own a cat, and I don't read magazines about cats; I'm interested in my little fuzzy purry and those of people I know, not really cats in the aggregate. I like computers, and own several. I am an IEEE member, and get their computer magazine already, which is more suited to me and my reading style than some other computer magazines I've seen. I furthermore did not have room in the budget for a magazine, being a broke college student with sufficient income of my own to pay on credit card and get assorted food, and my roommates were similarly broke. I wasn't working on a 'I work at McDonald's" budget -- I don't even have that much of a job. My credit card payment is $25 a month. I get checks from the survey place equalling maybe $10 a month if I'm lucky.
I think I broke his brain. Good.
The kind of advertising that I like doesn't try to make people who have no earthly use for something get it. It tries to find a product that will suit the existing needs or desires, without trying to push unneeded features. Educate people on the extras, fine. Convince them that they can't live without it? Nope.
Then, I'm a consumer misfit even for Alaska. I want all sorts of things that the average consumer may never have heard about, but I don't mind duct-taping my purse to keep it from falling apart.
I mean, when advertisements are mass-distributed, such as TV commercials, yes, it's one thing, if it's a broad enough market. Everybody needs food. Everybody needs clothing. Everybody does not need a computer. It's what drives the consumer culture, instilling a false sense of need for the product in the consumer, but I don't care for it; it's the antithesis of what I was raised on. But it's tolerable.
What personally offends me is the one-on-one sales pitches, directed by a human specifically to me, that presupposes that I use the kinds of goods and/or services that they are talking about, and thus it's only their job to convince me that theirs is better than all the rest, or that I simply can't live without it being done in the fashion that they, and only they, can do things.
There was that magazine salesguy. He was trying to convince me that I needed a magazine, because he had a magazine, somewhere, that would cater to my interests, fill a need that was not being met. In fact, that was not the case. I already had a computer magazine, and I follow the news online. I read books from libraries; I don't read magazines about reading. I own a cat, and I don't read magazines about cats; I'm interested in my little fuzzy purry and those of people I know, not really cats in the aggregate. I like computers, and own several. I am an IEEE member, and get their computer magazine already, which is more suited to me and my reading style than some other computer magazines I've seen. I furthermore did not have room in the budget for a magazine, being a broke college student with sufficient income of my own to pay on credit card and get assorted food, and my roommates were similarly broke. I wasn't working on a 'I work at McDonald's" budget -- I don't even have that much of a job. My credit card payment is $25 a month. I get checks from the survey place equalling maybe $10 a month if I'm lucky.
I think I broke his brain. Good.
The kind of advertising that I like doesn't try to make people who have no earthly use for something get it. It tries to find a product that will suit the existing needs or desires, without trying to push unneeded features. Educate people on the extras, fine. Convince them that they can't live without it? Nope.
Then, I'm a consumer misfit even for Alaska. I want all sorts of things that the average consumer may never have heard about, but I don't mind duct-taping my purse to keep it from falling apart.
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And other bowls too, but most of them sort of accumulated, and were not deliberately gone after.
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Agreed.
I don't call them telemarketers - I call them televangelists. They have an article of faith that I'm going to buy from them.
I dealt with one two jobs back - she was trying to talk me into buying floppy disk drive cleaning kits. I'd been working with personal computers for something like a decade at that point - I ended up hanging up on her when she said, 'you've been working with computers that long - you're already using such a product regularly!' To which I said, 'no - I have always found them to be a waste of money and time.' She didn't know how to deal, and started trying to convince me I was wrong.
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