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Marketing: Consumer Needs and Wants

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Does marketing reflect the needs and wants of consumers or does marketing shape consumer needs and wants?

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Solution Summary

This solution discusses marketing's role in shaping consumer needs and wants in 636 words with references.

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Now, we'll do the concept that marketing, in fact, reflects the demands of consumers. In this case, demand is a form of economic democracy where aggregated preferences are quickly translated to producers and have their symbolic form expressed in prices.

Here's a more academic piece dealing with consumer-driven demand for agricultural products:
http://www.farmfoundation.org/projects/documents/ConsumerDemand.pdf

One issue here is that increasing information on the nutrition, the nature of pesticides and genetic engineering are forcing firms to alter how they raise animals and keep pests off crops. Here, they are clearly saying that consumer education is driving reforms in the agricultural sector worldwide. Since income is growing worldwide (or so they say), this also means that consumers have more discretion and freedom in how and what they buy in terms of food.

The authors state:
"In high-income countries, consumers do not change their shopping habits when income and prices are relatively stable. ...

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