According to Dough McCormick, Chariman and CEO of iVillage, Inc, “Technologists focus on supply but they don’t understand advertising is focused on demand. Just because we have an available ad doesn’t mean we have to sell it.”

What in world does that mean? It means not every product online is going to sell. Online retailers and marketers are not going to succeed just because they are online. Marketing is about understanding demand of consumer and meeting it or creating demand for a product.

This means online business people must take time to understand consumer. They need to develop an understanding of consumer’s thinking, motivation, and needs. Just because you develop a website and slap up some product graphics and have a checkout process using paypal does not mean you’ll be selling and rolling in money.

Research would indicate that consumers don’t know what they’re thinking. According to an article written by Jack Shimell (2002) for Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, Consumers make their decisions and react to advertising based more on unconscious emotional processes than on conscious rational processes.

There appears to be an interplay between conscious and unconscious with unconscious being driving force, when it comes to reactions to advertising and purchase decision making.

There is also a distinct personality / temperament factor involved in consumer thinking and behavior. People with moderate extrovert traits tend to react more positively to advertising, while introverts and people with few extrovert traits would appear to be very difficult to affect through advertising.

Part of this may reside in fact that introverts tend to be energized by solitary activities that are less affected by outside factors while extroverts tend to be energized by outside influences such as social status, social engagement, peer relations, and social value of products or services.