Thanks for links! I watched the smoking one. It wasn’t exactly clear how the tobacco companies are a state cartel. It also seemed to focus on post 1992 but the plethora of brand name advertising before seems to indicate the tobacco industry had been a cartel before then. Other than that it was pretty great. Maybe the full version would answer my questions (time…)
I disagree. Marketing provides valuable information to the consumer. In the Coca-Cola example you mentioned, EVEN IF the formula is identical, you can’t masquerade as Coca-Cola, because consumers are expecting to get the product made by that company; therefore it is still fraud. Sometimes people really do just pay for the brand name.
Why did cigarette companies so aggresively push their brand name? Not all cigs are the same. This isn’t like Coca-Cola vs Pepsi (vs RC). There are a lot of brands (and a lot of types), and there are even more small time tobacco businesses that have to compete with the larger ones.
Do you smoke by any chance?
Are there a lot of small tobacco companies? The documentary posted above insinuated that tobacco companies and the gov were in bed together as a state cartel.
No
This may be of some interest. Here’s a lengthy list of tobacco companies (as well as other links like the ACLU for some reason).
Lol thanks for that first link. Taxing RYO tobacco is just too much. Though I disagree with the alleged motivation of radicals who want everyone to stop smoking. I’d view it more as corporate welfare, of all things.
This is a very good point. Advertising is just a means of creating value for the consumer over another vendor who is selling exactly the same thing. Assuming that it really is the exact same thing then the only reason for the consumer to choose one over another is the price. The only reason why the consumer might choose the product that is more expensive is if he values that product over the other. By what criteria he uses to value the product over the other is purely dependant on the individual, and the variables in this are enourmous.
It does raise the question what would happen to companies who rely heavily on advertising for revenue, i think Google is the best example. In a free market would Google not be able to generate sufficient revenue to cover costs? Because people do value it over others, i think it still would exist.
Maybe its not advertising itself that is the issue but rather the product that is actually being advertised. If the product is easily replicatable and duplicatable then im pretty sure that advertising for it would be greatly reduced because you would have people everywhere offering what is being advertised or what people value more. However as someone rightly pointed out, there will be one company who would have incurred advertising costs, where another company wouldnt, and yet they would be offering exactly the same thing.
With regards to trademark registration asociations, thats pretty much just shifting the problem; whats stopping someone “fraudulently” saying that they belong to “X” trademark registration association.
I think that it essentially boils down to how consumers value one vendor over another, and whether the product can be replicated easily.
This thread was never to be a debate about the merits of advertising.
I found an article on cato that basically gives me the answer to the OP’s Q. Here.
No i didnt think it was.
But like i said the importance of marketing a product on the free market transcends that of cigarettes companies. What is the point of letting people know about your product when others are selling the same thing, and there are no measures that are as effective as State enforced patents and trademarks to make sure people will buy YOUR product as a result of your marketing campaign.
There’s more product differentiation in the tobacco market. I’m not quite sure why, but Camels, Marlboros, Pall Malls, etc. all have different tastes. I’d be guessing that these tastes are influenced by the climate and other factors in the location the tobacco was grown.
Menthol, non-menthol, flavor, length, lights, filtered, etc etc - their all factors. Plus, roll-your-own, and mini-cigars.
For any smokers on here, does anyone know why Captain Black’s aren’t sold in stores? I have not been able to find them except online now. I’m thinking it has to do with the banning of flavored cigarettes.
I’m not just talking about menthol vs. non-menthol or other factors that can easily be manufactured. I’m talking about how menthol Newports taste different from menthol Camels (for example). Each brand seems to have its own unique taste.
Are you so sure they could undercut you out of the market? It’s true that they could theoretically sell the product cheaper if they had the same structure of production as the originator, but you won’t undercut the originator much if noone knows you’re selling product. Distributors need to know you’re out there, afterall, as well as typical consumers. And consumers won’t know your product is out there if distributors don’t carry it. When you manufacture a product, it doesn’t magically find its way on the shelves with a price tag next to your competitors. Sure you could go distributor to distributor and sell your product, but that has significant costs too, both explicit in hiring marketing people and implicit in opportunity costs of doing it yourself. Besides, you’ll probably sell to a lot more people if you set up advertising so that distributors come to you and not just the other way around. Advertising and marketing survives a very important purpose, regardless of the type of product you are producing. Here it can be a lot more helpful to think in a more Hayekian framework of how information is disseminated to consumers and distributors. Producers and central planners are not the only ones constrained by the availability of information.
would very much recommend the Rothbard lecture that I posted earlier on advertising. He mentions the same sort of thing only that he argues that he is a Pepsi man and would never be caught drinking Coke. He uses the argument of wine to make it clearer. If you are a complete novice, and have only tried a few different wines, you would think that all red wine is the same and all white wine is the same, but the more experienced you are, and the more refined your pallet is, it becomes very clear that its not all the same.
Snowflake! Good to see that you’re back posting again… It’s been getting rather dull around here.
I doubt that in the abscence of copy right laws there will be brand name copying left and right if that is what you’re attempting to propose… My guess is that people would perform agencies which would ensure that X product is indeed the product of X company and not of Y… It all depends upon how far the lack of intellectual property is pushed, and at what point you consider it fraud. At any rate I do not think that we would see an end to advirtising in a REASONABLE environment.
Historically the reason has been just what you said but that is not to say this is exclusive… This is to say that historically roads have been provided by the state and this is why the roads which have existed have existed, but this does not mean that there would not be roads if the state was not producing them.
Good to be back. Though school is kind of getting hectic..
If someone’s dumb enough to advertise a product i can duplicate, let em advertise for me 
Maybe some people will still prefer coca cola made by the original dudes who came up with it. But if I simply cloned one of their factories a lot of people would probably view the two products as identical. But this is speculation, and you’re right, its basically up to the consumer to determine what is and isn’t a valid substitute.
Its fraud if I do all of the above AND claim that I am the dudes who invented coca cola. If i just say, this product is coca cola its identical in every way and copy the packaging style (which no one owns) I think i’m in the green zone.
Ah well, the whole jumping off point of this thread was that my inner entrepreneur noticed the above, and then questioned why someone hadn’t thought of it before. The answer is probably state intervention, which a couple of people posted links to. Makes me happy to know my intuitions basically always check out. Means I can run my mouth about stuff I’m ignorant about and have a decent chance of being right