The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

1972 ADVERTISING 522the costs incurred to produce theproduct. The answer is clearly,no. Information is produced; it isdesired; it is a product; it is purchasedjointly with the productitself; it is a part of the package;and it is something which consumersvalue. Its provision is notsomething performed on the outsidethat makes people consumesomething which they would nothave consumed before. It is somethingfor which people are willingto pay; it is a service.You can distinguish differentparts of a service. You can distinguishbetween four wheels anda car. But the four wheels arecomplementary commodities. Thatis to say, the usefulness of theone is virtually nil without theavailability of the other. The carand gasoline are two separateproducts, to be sure, and yet theyare purchased jointly, perhapsfrom different producers, differentsuppliers, but they are nonethelessparts of a total package,a total product. If it happens thatthe information is produced andsold jointly with the product itself,then we have no reason toquestion the characteristics of thecosts of providing informationas true "production costs," notproducing necessarily the physicalcommodity about which informationis produced, but producinginformation which is independentlydesired by consumers, independentlybut jointly demanded,complementarily used togetherwith the "product" itself. In otherwords, the service of providinginformation is the service of providingsomething which is neededjust as importantly as the "product"itself.Why the Shouting?There is another aspect of advertisingwhich is often overlooked.Information is exceedinglyimportant. But, surely, it is argued,information can be providedwithout the characteristics of advertisingthat we know, withoutthe color, without the emotion,without the offensive aspects ofadvertising. Surely informationcan be provided in simple straightforwardterms. The address of thisand this store is this and this place.These and these qualities of commoditiesare available at these andthese prices. Why do illustratedadvertising messages have to beprojected? Why do all kinds of obviouslyuninformative matter haveto be introduced into advertisingmessages? This is what rendersthe information aspects of advertisingso suspect. The Marxistssimply laugh it away. They say itis ridiculous to contend that advertisingprovides any kind ofgenuine information. If one rests