RETAILOMANIA: January 2013

Friday, January 25, 2013

Stay creative

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo.o

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

When Wanting Is More Important Than Having: Will That New Car Really Make You Happy?

Materialistic consumers may derive more pleasure from desiring products than they do from actually owning them, and are willing to overspend and go into debt because they believe that future purchases will transform their lives, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Thinking about acquisition provides momentary happiness boosts to materialistic people, and because they tend to think about acquisition a lot, such thoughts have the potential to provide frequent mood boosts. But the positive emotions associated with acquisition are short-lived. Although materialists still experience positive emotions after making a purchase, these emotions are less intense than before they actually acquire a product,” writes author Marsha L. Richins (University of Missouri).
Materialists tend to buy more than other consumers and are more willing to go into debt because they believe that buying things will make them happier. But does acquisition actually make them happier?
In three different studies, materialists (compared to other consumers) reported significantly stronger positive emotions when thinking about an important future purchase. This was true for both expensive items like automobiles and cheaper items like household electronics, and whether they anticipated making the purchase within a few weeks or a year or so in the future.
Materialists were more likely than others to believe that an upcoming purchase would transform their lives in meaningful ways. For example, they tended to believe that an important new acquisition will improve their relationships with other people, enhance the way they feel about themselves, enable them to have more pleasure in life, and allow them to carry out life tasks more effectively. The intensity of the happiness boost a materialist experiences before a purchase is directly related to the extent to which they expect these transformations to occur.
“Materialists are more likely to overspend and have credit problems, possibly because they believe that acquisitions will increase their happiness and change their lives in meaningful ways. Learning that acquisition is less pleasurable than anticipating a purchase may help them delay purchases until they are better able to afford them,” the author concludes.

Are Consumers with Fewer Friends More Likely to Take Financial Risks?

Feeling socially isolated causes consumers to pursue riskier but potentially more profitable financial opportunities, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research.
“Seeking social acceptance and maintaining close relationships are among the most fundamental and universal human needs. Consumers are often willing to invest or sacrifice important resources to secure social bonds. In the absence of social support, consumers seek significantly more money to secure what they want out of the social system surrounding them. Feeling socially rejected triggers riskier financial decision-making,” write authors Rod Duclos (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), Echo Wen Wan (University of Hong Kong), and Yuwei Jiang (Hong Kong Polytechnic University).
Feeling alone or rejected is a common experience. Romantic relationships end, people are ignored at parties or in office conversations, and offers of friendship are frequently rebuffed. In the absence of social support, do consumers seek and value money as an alternative means to get what they want out of the social system? And does this lead to greater financial risk-taking?
In one study, consumers were asked to recall a social situation that left them feeling either included or excluded. They were then asked to choose between a set of high-odds/low-reward and low-odds/high-reward gambling options. Feeling rejected fostered riskier decisions. However, this effect was mediated by the perceived instrumentality of money. That is, in the absence of social support, excluded consumers started to seek and value money as an alternative means to secure what they want out of the social system.
“Given the necessity of balancing between risk and financial reward in many important financial decisions (saving for college or retirement, deciding how to pay for health care and insurance, investing in the stock market), understanding how consumers trade risk for reward could help them make more informed decisions. For example, consumers might choose to delay important financial decisions following a breakup or a falling out with friends, colleagues, or family,” the authors conclude.

Social networks may inflate self-esteem, reduce self-control

Users of Facebook and other social networks should beware of allowing their self-esteem—boosted by "likes" or positive comments from close friends—to influence their behavior: It could reduce their self-control both on and offline, according to an academic paper by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia Business School that has recently been published online in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Titled "Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control," the research paper demonstrates that users who are focused on close friends tend to experience an increase in self-esteem while browsing their social networks; afterwards, these users display less self-control. Greater social network use among this category of users with strong ties to their friends is also associated with individuals having higher body-mass indexes and higher levels of credit-card debt, according to the paper.
"To our knowledge, this is the first research to show that using online social networks can affect self-control," said coauthor Andrew T. Stephen, assistant professor of business administration and Katz Fellow in Marketing in the University of Pittsburgh Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration. "We have demonstrated that using today's most popular social network, Facebook, may have a detrimental affect on people's self-control."
Stephen coauthored the research with Keith Wilcox, assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School. The paper includes the results of five separate studies conducted with a total of more than 1,000 U.S. Facebook users.
In the researchers' initial study, participants completed surveys about how closely they're connected to friends on Facebook. Then they were split into two groups: one group that wrote about the experience of browsing Facebook and another group that actually browsed Facebook. Both groups then completed a self-esteem survey. Regardless of whether the participants wrote about Facebook browsing or actually browsed the site, the participants with weak ties to Facebook friends did not experience an increase in self-esteem, but those with strong ties to friends had an enhanced sense of self-esteem.
Stephen and Wilcox's second study evaluated why Facebook users with strong ties to friends were more likely to experience an increase in self-esteem. Participants were prompted to browse Facebook for five minutes. Some were told to pay attention to the status updates and other information people were sharing with them. Others were directed to concentrate on information they were sharing. The researchers concluded that browsing Facebook only increased participants' self-esteem when they were focused on the information they were presenting to others.
"We find that people experience greater self-esteem when they focus on the image they are presenting to strong ties in their social networks," said Wilcox. "This suggests that even though people are sharing the same positive information with strong ties and weak ties on social networks, they feel better about themselves when the information is received by strong ties than by weak ties."
Cookies, granola bars, and word puzzles were part of the methodology of the third and fourth studies, which established the link between self-esteem and self-control. Participants in the third study were instructed either to check Facebook or read news articles on CNN.com, then choose between eating a granola bar or a chocolate-chip cookie. Those who had browsed Facebook were more likely to choose the cookie. Participants in the fourth study were given anagram word puzzles to solve after either checking Facebook or reading TMZ.com, a celebrity news and gossip website. The Facebook browsers were more likely to give up on the puzzles.
The fifth investigation, an online field study, examined the relationship between online social network use and offline behaviors associated with poor self-control. Participants completed a survey asking about their height and weight, the number of credit cards they own and the amount of debt on them, and how many friends they have offline, among other questions. "The results suggest that greater social network use is associated with a higher body-mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit-card debt for individuals with strong ties to their social network," the researchers wrote.
Stephen and Wilcox say the five studies have implications for policy makers because self-control is an important mechanism for maintaining social order and well-being. "It would be worthwhile for researchers and policy makers to further explore social network use in order to better understand which consumers may be particularly vulnerable to suffering negative psychological or social consequences," the authors wrote.
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