Rebound Effect

When marketing technology does more harm than good

Does the law of diminishing returns apply to marketing technology?

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the rebound effect hit marketing over the last decade, which makes it all the more pressing to identify where we are and where this thing is likely headed.

You probably won’t find articles about the rebound effect applied to marketing. It’s more likely found in pharmaceuticals or energy economics. But, if others are willing to apply this hypothesis to those disparate fields, surely we can use it for marketing too.

In pharmaceuticals, the rebound effect is seen in patients prescribed certain drugs to control symptoms. (We’ll keep it simple.) But, when patients are taken off the drugs they may experience a rebound effect — the symptoms will actually be worse than they were before treatment started.

The energy version of the rebound effect goes something like this. We build more energy-efficient refrigerators to reduce electricity consumption, which benefits the environment. However, that technological gain can be negated by my eight-year-old leaving the door to the fridge open.

If you want to geek out a little more on the rebound effect just check out this article in The Economist, or learn more about Daniel Khazzoom and Leonard Brookes. They are the two economists that mainstreamed the hypothesis…