Extrinsic Motivation in Marketing

In an ideal world of rational customers, extrinsic motivation would not be necessary.  Customers would purchase items for the value they receive from using them and vendors would be satisfied with getting the business of customers with a genuine need for their product.   The use of extrinsic motivation, adding some additional incentive to convince a customer to purchase a product for which he seems no intrinsic value, is a questionable practice and I find arguments to the contrary difficult to accept.

The main argument in favor of extrinsic motivation is that customers are not rational or particularly intelligent, and that an extrinsic reward can provide motivation to purchase a product whose intrinsic reward is not recognized until it is owned.   Aside of the condescending attitude, there is a grain of truth: people do not know the value of something they have never tried, so the "free sample" is an effective way to get a product into a customer's hands so that he can determine whether he has a genuine need for it - and other forms of extrinsic rewards can likewise be used to convince someone to try a product or brand that they might not have otherwise considered.

But this seems to be rational only if it is used to introduce a new product to the customer.   Once they have tried a product and experienced it, the customers are able to make a realistic objective of whether they value it for its intrinsic value.   So if a firm offers extrinsic enticements on an ongoing basis, there is clearly a lack of intrinsic value.   Interestingly enough, few customers seem to consider an enticement to be an indicator of such a problem - one would think that more people would have caught on by now.

Another argument is that the intrinsic reward may be perceived as being worth less than the effort required to obtain the product, and as such the additional enticement tips the scale in the advantage of one brand over another.  This also seems valid, though it is also a shabby (and costly) alternative to rectifying the problem with the product or acquisition process that causes it to be unacceptable without the additional incentive.    Until the real problem is solved, additional incentives are necessary to convince customers to take the brand's offer instead of a different offer that is functionally better.

A rather interesting argument is made that extrinsic rewards are useful when an individual does not wish to admit to being interested in the intrinsic value.  For example, someone who  purchases a box of cookies claims to have done so because the brand donates to a given charity, and in that way is able to escape the embarrassing admission that they simply wanted a sweet snack.   This seems entirely valid, though it does seem to reflect poorly on the culture itself - it requires customers who are hypocritical and disingenuous, which seem to exist in ample supply.

In all, I'm led back to the initial consideration: that customers are naturally motivated to purchase products that provide intrinsic value and that extrinsic motivation is unnecessary - and this does seem to be the practice in (true) luxury good and B2B  marketing, neither of which typically use extrinsic incentives.