Emerson’s boss wants to use cognitive dissonance to sell a new type of cell phone. Emerson is not convinced that the campaign is going to be successful. What should Emerson tell his boss? Cognitive dissonance is not very effective in changing people’s attitudes. Cognitive dissonance advertising is too expensive. Cognitive dissonance techniques are difficult to implement on a mass scale. Cognitive dissonance is impossible to create for consumer products.

Cognitive dissonance refers to a state of operation of conflicting views and ideas in the mind, at the same moment. Usually those contrasting views are difficult to reconcile.

A marketer targets consumer's state of cognitive dissonance by advertising and touching upon those product attributes which create a dissonance between a consumer's perceived idea of the product and what the advertiser depicts.

This state of perceptible conflict in the ideas leads a consumer towards it's reconciliation and induces a purchase.

For example, a salesperson advertising an expensive watch as, a product only purchased by "royal" social class. Now, the consumer though considers the product to be too expensive. But now, he thinks of the royalty aspect, which may ultimately induce him to buy such a product.

Such techniques can only be implemented to induce sales at individual level or targeted at few customers. Wherein the customers are huge, the conflict or cognitive dissonance gap would be huge, which the marketer will not be able to bridge.