Draft - Performed qualitative analysis; don't forget quantitative analysis

"Principles of Economics" discusses advertising: hiring celebrities for endorsements and spending large sums on renovations—these reflect a brand's investment and show the brand's confidence in its products.

This is a reason for advertising, but how much weight should be given to this reason?

Once I saw a shop selling boots on Taobao; the photos were very cool and the product descriptions were good, but for such expensive items I would definitely investigate before ordering. I searched other platforms and found it was a scam shop with false advertising. That shop had existed for seven or eight years—remarkably, it survived so long by burning money on ads.

"If a restaurant doesn't intend to operate for the long term, it won't spend a lot on decoration." This is one of the reasons. When I read this sentence in "Principles of Economics" I thought it made sense; I had never considered this angle before. I had read Taleb's books and seen his criticisms of economics, but I remember his critiques as not very specific. Recently I read "Thinking, Fast and Slow": the human brain has a fast, low-energy System 1 and a slow, energy-consuming System 2. When people first see a restaurant, most use System 1; instinctively they feel the place is well-decorated and want to go there, rather than using System 2 to reason, "This restaurant is so nicely decorated, it must plan to operate long-term, so its offerings won't be bad." That probably imposes a causal relationship.

Having a celebrity endorse a product seems to rely on fans' love for the celebrity, not on large spending to demonstrate the brand's confidence in itself.