Can advertising really "create demand" for a product? Insofar as it makes consumers aware of products of which they had not previously known or perhaps even conceived, advertising can certainly lead to changes in consumer thinking, values, and hence demand schedules. For example, the demand for a new movie might be virtually non-existent until consumers have seen advertising for it. In this limited sense, advertising plainly does "create demand." This process, however, is one that most of us would regard, from a standpoint of objective values rather than praxeology, as basically beneficent, even invaluable.

The consumer is not essentially passive in this process, however, because the advertiser can only succeed by appealing on some level to values or ideas that are already accepted by the consumer. As was shown in Section 2, an individual (even one who has a very low level of mental independence) ultimately acts on the conclusions of his or her own consciousness (cf. p. 2.4:6). The level to which advertisers must appeal depends on the psycho-epistemology of their intended consumers—on whether they are guided by feelings or by thought, by the opinions of others or by their own minds. In the free market, where consumers tend to be more independent, skeptical, and sophisticated, marketers are obliged to sell products on the basis of their objective value, rather than irrelevant auras of suavity or sex appeal.

Sales based on fraudulent advertising, of course, are barred from the free market, since fraud is a form of force (p. 4.5:10).

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