Marketing is a science that draws on statistics, psychology and, some would say, general trickery to get the public to part with their hard earned cash.
Sometimes defined as helping people make happy decisions, sales and marketing professionals will according to some, pull any stunt, any trick, technique or turn to pull a crowd in and make sure they never go away empty handed.
When it comes to the ultra competitive and ultra profitable world of insurance sales, this is clearly evident in many of the strategies we see online, in the press and on TV.
With the rise and rise of the Internet and comparison websites many people are now bypassing the brokers and the big high street retail set ups to land themselves a great deal online.
Not only are they cutting costs but they're also making sure that they are purchasing exactly the sort of product that is right for them.
Empowered with the ability to quickly search on very specific criteria and to stand products up against each other in like for like comparisons, now people are in a much stronger purchasing place.
It's now a case of the consumer being in charge, rejecting the old 'passive buy' for a more pro-active approach and taking advantage of a much broader marketplace.
Standing aside from the comparison sites One of the latest marketing approaches taken by some of the largest insurance companies is to stand aside from the comparison sites and declare themselves as non participants.
The very deliberate and calculated claim is that they are so competitive, offer such a great range of products and have the ability to singularly provide you with all you need that they don't feel compelled to go head to head with the competition.
They've opted out, bigger and better in their opinions than the competition and above the scramble for sales that constitute the comparison market.
Other reasons they use might include not wanting to pay to be on comparison sites, instead opting to pass on the savings in reduced premiums.
Their fundamental reasoning for non-participation is that price is only one factor when considering car insurance, and that consumers need to take more than the cost into account when choosing their insurance provider.
The reasoning goes that it's like buying food or wine or chalk or cheese based on price alone and not on value or relative worth, that there are important degrees of subjectivity involved in purchasing motor insurance that a price comparison website can't cater for.
Maybe they haven't taken a close enough look at the range of criteria on which policies can be evaluated on comparison sites.
It's an interesting ploy - the 'our product is so superior that we don't have to go head to head with our competitors on a comparison site' approach.
Frightened of the competition? Then again maybe their products are just much more expensive than the competition and they would rather not have this shown up as consistently and clearly as it would be on a comparison site.
There's clearly a calculation that's been made at head office which says that the value of the business lost through non inclusion on comparison sites will more than be made up for by the additional value of sales through their other routes to market.
However, companies that do participate in comparison sites are also calculating the value of their committal to online business marketing.
That additional volume of sales will compensate for their more competitive pricing and decreased value.
The only way to really find out is to get comparison site quotes and then compare them to quotes from the companies that have opted out.
Although slightly self defeating in that it goes against the whole point of a comparison site (ease of comparison), it is certainly worth doing a couple of times.
However, the chances are that in the end the competitive nature of the comparison sites means that you may as well save yourself the hassle and just stick with them.
The chances are that your comparison site insurance provider will ultimately turn out to deliver not just the cheapest quote, but the most appropriate one too.