if you are really as sensible as you're apparently claiming, you wouldn't ever buy a new car at all ... people still buy new cars, because there is social and personal value in having a new car that no amount of economics can justify.
Which is why i said 10-15 years. certainly it is more efficient to buy a used vehicle and i likely will but if you wanted to get anal, you could say advertisements effect your choice there to. There is no reason one can't buy a new vehicle and if i have oodles of money, I might just buy something nice. You also have to understand that i don't understand this "social" thing. Why would i care what people think of my car? If i think its nice then that's all i care.
none of us (of the male persuasion) "see" ourselves buying tampons, but what if your wife tells you to buy tampons of a particular brand, and you forget which brand when you get to the supermarket? are you going to come home with no tampons even though you know there is a chance they will be the wrong brand and that you'll have to return to exchange them? this is what advertisers are counting on, and i think its possibly a more common scenario than you might think. if i have to remember more than 3 things i usually get my wife to write it down, but sometimes i think i should be able to remember 3 things and forget one of them anyway.
Cellphone much? You really are trying to hard to make me thing that tampon advertisements are for me. Do you work for a tampon company in their advertisement department?
Also, if you really want to get into "brand recognition", there are several brands i see heavily advertised that i will never buy or use. Why can't I opt out of these brands advertisements? I'm already very familiar with the name.
