Week 9 EOC: The Dark Side of Market Research

Doing the initial research for the "Dark Side" marketing research, I can across topics that included pornography, tobacco advertisements, and an assortment of other devious subject matter. It is true that we live in a very strange time in the history of humanity. More people are alive and interconnected with the rest of society through the internet. From a marketing research point of view, this is fantastic. However, the information that we can get from just basic research of these deviant sites is a little shocking. I could discuss how research shows that smokers that are concerned with their health smoke “light” cigarettes and are more likely to use vaporizers despite the lack of knowledge of what is supposed to make them the “healthier” option. Instead I’m going to focus on the porn statistics that came from my research.

Our Culture is Porn Culture (U.S. and International Figures)

• There are over 68 million daily searches for pornography in the United States. That’s 25% of all daily searches (IFR, 2006).
• 10% of adults admit to having an addiction to online pornography (IFR, 2006).
• This possibly means around 90% of adult men are either liars, in complete denial or have a healthy sex life of the internet.
• Every 39 minutes a new porn film is created in the United States.
• 20% of American men admit they access pornography at work.
• 70% of all Internet porn traffic occurs during workdays (9am – 5pm) (Sex Tracker, 2012)
• The porn industry makes more money than Hollywood.  (US Statistics)
• 13,000 adult videos are produced annually, amassing over $13 billion dollars in profit. By comparison, Hollywood released 507 movies and made only 8.8 billion (Bridges and Wosnitzer, 2007).
• They also make more than:
• The National Football League, The National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball combined and more than NBC, CBS, and ABC combined. In addition, they have larger revenues than the top technology companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix) combined (IFR, 2006).

This research has opened my eyes to the insidious nature of pornography and how it has embedded itself into our culture. To liven things up I have included a link to a video to make me feel better.

https://youtu.be/zBDCq6Q8k2E