Summary

The economic principle I researched was “People generally respond to incentives in predictable ways.” My overall research question was “How do companies use advertisements to get you to buy their products?” Overall, I found that even though I had known going into it that advertisements often use a peripheral route of persuasion, there are far more techniques than I had expected.

From the content down to the colors, companies use all kinds of interesting techniques to persuade us to buy their product. The red and yellow of the McDonald’s ‘M’ can make you hungry and happy enough to pull over and purchase a Happy Meal. Seeing smiling faces drinking soda can make us buy that soda for ourselves. Receiving a million emails over and over again can both annoy us, but also unconsciously drive us to buy the product. And many more.

Over the course of this research, I learned many things I did not know about subconscious advertising techniques, and it has really given new meaning to the economic principle, “People generally respond to incentives in predictable ways.” Some of the techniques I researched can most certainly get you to do things through incentivization, whether you’re aware of it or not!

There really is not ‘answer’ to my overarching research question, but I hope you all enjoyed learning about a plethora of knowledge I opened up while researching as much as I did!