Reverse Psychology Marketing: The Death of Traditional Marketing and the Rise of the New "Pull" Game

Reverse Psychology Marketing: The Death of Traditional Marketing and the Rise of the New "Pull" Game

SINHA, Indrajit & FOSCHT, Thomas
Hampshire: Pagrave, 2006.

This book is not about engaging in the blame-and-praise game for the so-called winners and losers of the current business environment. Something deeper and more substantial is afoot in business today, which is changing the familiar management script. The tables have been turned on the fortunes of many long-established firms. The authors believe that a majority of the firms that are in trouble, and those that have failed recently, have done so because they have been let down by their own marketing. Traditional marketing is now being turned on its head. The ideas of marketing and branding strategy that passed for conventional wisdom before do not hold true today. A small but growing number of innovative firms have adopted radically new and differentiated approaches based upon reverse psychology marketing, reflecting a clear and unmistakable change in the global culture. In this era of globalization and the Internet the consumer is behaving in a radically different way and is no longer susceptible to the timeworn ploys of push marketing. The present times call for a new game - one that strays from the prescriptions that traditional marketing theory holds dear, indeed that sometimes works in a way that is counter to it (what the authors call 'anti-marketing') and that lays focus on network-building and 'pulling the customer' above all else.