Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

216 What To Make of ItSales promotion presumably sometimes shifts purchasestoward luxury services and goods: haute couture forthe wealthy, and designer underpants for everybody. But ashift is only a shift, not an abandonment of underwear in favorof tailored shirts. And shifts toward luxuries and thepursuit of fads and fashions have multiple causes, such ascompetitive spending, “luxury fever,” and trend setting bywealthy or conspicuous consumers. There is not much evidenceof a binding circularity, even when wealthy and conspicuousconsumers are enlisted in advertising campaigns.As noted in Chapter 5, the sales campaigns of marketelites are not driven by desires to block or reshape mass demands.In pushing sales these elites are unlike politicalelites intent on protecting their advantages of wealth,power, and status. Market elites want profitable sales; theycare very little what they sell so long as consumers will buyit. To respond to consumers, however, usually requires capitalinvestment, hence lead times to gear up for production.Having committed capital to the production of whateverconsumers want, corporations, we saw, do not want potentialcustomers then to change their minds. And, of course,they want the maximum returns that they can obtain fromthe capital commitments. Hence entrepreneurs will oftenspend heavily to achieve the sales they have planned. Althoughthis is a kind of circularity, it is not very threateningto consumer control over market elites. At its best, it is acircularity that makes it possible for market elites to putgreat commitments of capital where consumers want them.Assault on the MindSome sales promotion is informational—it tells a consumerwhat is for sale, where, and at what price—but the