In business, the image of a product is more important than the product itself.

In business, the image of a product is more important than the product itself.

11:15 to 11:42

Business is a very artistic field and requires persistence, persuasiveness and often times guile. Businesses often come in two varieties, either service oriented or product oriented, in which the latter is more common. Products launched by many companies have been glamorized by the use of advertisements and other visual aids in an effort to persuade consumers in purchasing the item. Businesses accomplish this by either focusing on the image of a product or the products importance itself. There are specific circumstances in which this applies.

Firstly consider a situation in which, the image of a product is more important than the product itself. Many businesses rely on the image of a product to sell it and is often accomplished by using an economics concept of “soft sell”. Soft sell is where advertisements for products are directed towards the emotions rather than cognitive reasoning of the viewer and potential consumer. This is most frequently found in the fashion and cosmetics industry. In both the fashion and cosmetics industry visual images are often used to convey hidden images and ideas to consumers along with the advertisement for the products. For example, fashion companies such as Gap, Louis Voutton, Dolce and Victorias Secret all spend millions on advertising using images to capture the consumer audience. In most cases, sex appeal is a very popular method of luring consumers into getting the product, when it is a desire or a wanted item. The image of the product is often shown as stylish, fits in with the social norm, rich and in good taste. Over the past few years there has been so much fierce competition amongst lingerie and perfume companies, such as Axe, in which some companies flourished by glamorizing the product with sex appeal. Likewise automobile companies such as Nissan and Toyota have relied on imagery from picturesque locations and cartoon characters to target children and adults to buy family vehicles. Thus it is evident that an image of a product is more important than a product it self when a consumer is a wanted item and fulfills one’s desire.

In contrast, consider a situation in which, the product is more important than the image of a product. In today’s drastically changing world of technology, companies use the concept of hard sell that focus on details, cognitive information, facts, and data rather than imagery to sell a product. For instance, many computer companies use the concept of hard sell by exaggerating and creating an obsession with numbers of quantities such as, memory, ram, disk space in megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Also companies tend to focus on, the amount cores, longevity of battery life, and speed of internet connection in megabytes per second. Thus in the case of computers, the product is more important than the image. It is a tool and the way it looks is secondary to the way it performs. The products specification is more important than the aesthetic looks.

All in all, the product and the product image are important but each is specific to a different circumstance. When a product is appealing to our wants then image is more important to grab attention of consumer and fulfill the desire as in the  case of the fashion industry to move products. However, when product appeals to needs then, the product and details itself are important as in the case of computers. Computer is a tool that must accomplish daily tasks thus the way it looks is secondary and the functionality to fulfill needs is more important.