Because of the complex interplay between the rational and the emotional, identifying and satisfying needs has to be done on an individual basis. A single message for the population is called an advertisement, and while advertising has a role to play in influencing attitudes, it is pretty ineffective in actually making people decide to buy things. Many products that we take for granted today – meaning that we go to shops and buy them – started life facing big selling hurdles. Vacuum cleaners were sold door to door by highly motivated, ‘evangelical’ sales forces. The basic proposition is that vacuum cleaners are effective at removing dust, a definite need now, and possibly even more pronounced in the days when vacuums were a novelty and people used coal fires. Surely they would walk their way into people’s homes? Well, we do not know how effective by today’s standards early vacuum cleaners were, but technical performance is a cognitive issue. Where they failed was not on the effective, but the affective front. The proposal that I need a vacuum cleaner – a machine to help me keep my house clean – is a clear suggestion that currently, I am not capable of doing so. Well, I do not wish to be told that. To overcome this negative message, the foot-in-the-door evangelists had to give demonstrations showing how their automated cleaners would enhance my performance of the task. The machines were really sold because of their attachments, and not the basic function we know today. (It enables us to live with fitted carpets instead of having to take them up and beat them twice a year.)

An added complication with negative connotations for vacuum cleaners was that they arrived at a time when many of the people most likely to be able to purchase them were just beginning to realize that they could no longer afford domestic servants. Since those days, we have become used to labor saving devices, yet there is one which has yet to become universal in US homes – the dishwasher. Washing machines for clothes were not so difficult to sell when they first appeared, as they replaced the process of heating water in a copper, and the need to agitate the washing by hand – straightforward rather than radical steps. People continued to use mangles to remove water from the clean clothes, either those they already owned, or which came as an integral part of the new machine. The radical step was the introduction of the spin dryer, which initially came alongside the by now familiar washer, in the ‘twin tub’ format. Though these were always available in shops, their success depended upon another evangelical sales force. Its members made a fuss of how much cheaper they were (cutting out the middleman) but in reality, it does not matter how cheap something is to someone who does not want it. What the sales force did was create the need for spin dryers (the contemporary response being, ‘I don’t need one, I’ve got a mangle’). Once people were used to spin dryers, the process of converting to a single drum, fully automatic machine which most people now possess and certainly accept as necessary, was straightforward.

George has been writing articles for nearly 5 years now. Not only does he specialize in business and marketing subjects, you can also check out his latest website which functions as a reverse cell phone book and helps people find the owner of a specific cell phone number.