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Paul, I also have to disagree about your views on advertising. Being an advertising man yourself I dare say you take the view that the ad industry leads all of public thinking, but I don't think this is true at all. Some regard advertising as a cynical method of brainwashing the masses, others see it as merely publishing information about products and services. We all know that advertisers want to gain popularity through repetitive exposure but is this the only thing that works? I don't think so, not when out-of-town shopping offers so many real-world perks such as better prices, big (free) car parks, and an overall better shopping experience. It's also the same with online shopping. Amazon grew into an international mega-business from nothing with very little advertising. Have you EVER seen an advert for Amazon on TV? My business continues to work (albeit with difficulty during the recession) and we never advertise.
Tesco's profits do indeed reflect the public's love of big shopping and as I have always said, the Medieval "high street" market concept is a dying force because of online and out-of-town shopping culture. We, the shoppers, decide who lives and who dies in the world of shopping. I don't think advertising makes that much of a difference. After all, Tesco and Morrisons and Asda and whoever else are not advertising to make us aware of their culture, they are simply fighting for scraps claiming to have achieved X-number of cheaper shopping baskets than their rivals. They're advertising based on their own little price wars rather than brainwashing us to visit them. We already visit them, a lot.
I can't argue that advertising has SOME influence on people but I don't believe for one microsecond that the public (on the whole) are the brain-dead zombies that some advertisers may liek to think they are.