Demarketing

We all understand the basic principles underpinning marketing activity: to identify unfulfilled needs and desires and boost demand for the solutions a product is offering. The mantra is always "sell more". De-marketing tries for the very opposite. Why would a company actively try to decrease demand?

There are many good reasons to do so: a firm cannot supply large enough quantities, or wants to limit supply to a region of narrow profit margin. Or, crucially, to discourage undesirable customers: those that could be bad for brand reputation, or in the case of the finance sector, high risk. De-marketing can yield effective solutions to these issues, effectively curtailing demand yet (crucially) not destroying it. Nevertheless, the fundamental negativity of de-marketing strategies often causes organisations to hide them from view and, as a result, they are rarely studied.

This then is the first book to cast light on the secretive, counterintuitive world of de-marketing, decon