Branding

Why would someone choose a credit card with a one percent interest rate over another with a zero percent rate? The answer, says a new study, lies in the fact that consumers are often flummoxed when it comes to zero. "A reasonable assumption is that a product will be more attractive when it offers more of a good thing, such as free pictures (with a digital camera purchase), or less of a bad thing, like interest rates on a credit card," says Mauricio Palmeira of Monash University, Australia...

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...