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Feeling lonely? Better find out the return policy on your gifts this year.
A new study by the Stanford Graduate School of Business finds that lonely consumers tend to make purchases they later regret and a lot of it has to do with marketing.
The main reason is that most companies' TV commercials and print ads depict non-lonely people enjoying their product. Seriously, no miserable person in their right mind can relate to these images and it's pretty insulting when a company implies you're a loser, said Baba Shiv, Standford's professor of marketing and author of the study.
Conversely, lonely consumers seeking a stamp of social approval might end up buying things they can't stand simply because they get "majority preference," or are what everyone else is into. Ignoring their taste only makes them feel worse and creates "the possibility of a troubling mismatch between buying decisions and actual preferences, said Shiv.
What's more, "if a lonely person makes a purchase in public, but the consumption happens in private, that can result in huge dissatisfaction," Shiv said, noting lonely people's refusal to openly admit they're miserable.
Taking his studies of consumer behavior into account, Shiv feels the best way to dodge the bullet is for marketers to start creating advertisements that appeal to lonely consumers, preferably online, where these lonely consumers won't feel ashamed about buying World of Warcraft video games on Amazon.
That's one way to solve the problem, but perhaps these consumers just need to evolve their money brain and stop making deluded choices.
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See Also:
- SANTANOMICS: How Giving Lousy Gifts Could Rescue Our Economy
- The Simple Way To Save Big On All Your Christmas Shopping
- Presenter's Paradox: Why Giving More Gifts Is A HUGE Waste Of Money
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
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