Brands and People

It is not the checking of one's bank account size that influences consumer behaviour; rather, it's the time that has elapsed since payday. A recent study, published in the Journal of Marketing, says that payday proximity means more than awareness of the amount of money in the bank and product prices. It actually changes consumer motives, response to messages and purchase behaviour, contend University of Utah marketing professors Himanshu and Arul Mishra. "Our findings are surprising because...

Can you forge an emotional bond with a brand so strong that, if forced to buy a competitor's product, you suffer separation anxiety? Researchers now insist that the answer is yes. In fact, they go on to assert, that the bond can be so strong that consumers are willing to sacrifice time, money, energy and reputation to maintain their attachment to that brand.That's what you call brand loyalty. The study indicates that brand attachment has much stronger impact on consumers than previously believed...

People are willing to pay more for products that elicit their envy — but that's only when they are motivated by a positive, benign form of envy. "Our studies showed that people who had been made envious of someone who owned an iPhone were willing to pay 80 Euros more on average," say researchers Niels van de Ven, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Rik Pieters (Tilburg University), whose findings have been published in the Journal of Consumer Research. The researchers made some important discoveries about...

Sometimes pride in an achievement can lead people to indulge in unhealthy choices. Indulgence often scores over self-control. Across four studies in the food consumptions and spending domains, researchers have shown that pride is associated with two opposing forces; it promotes a sense of achievement, which increases indulgence, and it promotes self-awareness, which facilitates self control. The authors set out to examine the effect of pride on consumer self-control decisions, and discovered...