Can A Shopping Bag Make You Feel Glamorous? In the June 2010 edition of the Journal of Consumer Research, a new study shows that certain brands have a personality of their own and actually change the way people feel about themselves. Many companies such as Nike and Harley-Davidson spend a lot of money each year on their marketing campaigns to make sure that their band has an appealing personality. The latest research in this article says that the brand’s personality does indeed rub of onto the consumer – even if that product is only used for a short period of time.
We all experience this effect when we wear certain ‘designer’ clothes or when we spray a certain cologne / perfume. This ‘brand personality adoption’ effect can even be seen as far as carrying certain shopping bags over others. Women who carry a Victoria’s Secret shopping bag perceive themselves as more feminine, glamorous, and good-looking compared to others who carried plain shopping bags. The study also showed that others who carried a pen embossed with the MIT logo felt more like a leader and intelligent, compared to others who carried blank pens. How do you feel when you wear your favorite team’s jersey or sweatshirt?
How can you put this into action? If you are having a bad day, take an empty Cartier, Victoria’s Secret, or other high-end designer store’s shopping bag to the mall with you and put your other purchases in the bag you brought. Spray your favorite designer cologne / perfume to give yourself a ‘boost’.
What can you do if you own a small business? If you are a service company, have your salespeople write up proposals using a BMW, Mercedes, or Cadillac pen. Your prospect will see those logos and associate that other company’s brand feelings with your company. Why do you think so many companies hire sports and entertainment celebrities to promote their products? Because they know that the feelings and emotions associated from that celebrity will transfer over to their product. It could be as simple for you as hanging a picture of a Lamborghini sports car in your office to transfer the feeling of hip, sporty, and well built over onto your companies image – customers would see that when they are in your office.
For further information on retail persuasion techniques, check out http://www.RetailPersuasion.com
Tags: feel better, persuasion and influence techniques, retail shopping, retail stores, retail therapy, self worth
What a post Ken!! Very informative and easy to understand. Looking for more such posts!! Do you have a myspace or a facebook? I recommended it on digg. Thank you for this information on shopping and retail stores.
Hi Ken,
I love this research into this topic of branding shopping bags. I think it was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I used to live in NYC. Sophisticated NY women would carry their brown bag lunch in a Saks Fifth Ave little shopping bag. In San Francisco it could have been I Magnin (in the day, hand over heart, RIP) or Neiman Marcus. No plan brown bags for us! We FELT more like sophisticated NYrs doing that.
I like both the study and how you then use it to suggest ways to weave this into our lives to feel better about ourselves that day.
Happy Dating and Relationships,
April Braswell
After 40 Dating Expert