In a 2010 paper published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the psychologists Jesse Chandler and Norbert Schwarz found that, when consumers were primed to think of products in personal terms, they declared themselves less likely to replace them. (The effect could be created easily—for example, by asking respondents to describe their cars using personality words such as “dependable.”) And the “personalities” associated with brands can affect us in other, subtler ways. A 2008 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research by a trio of marketing and psychology scholars found that individuals exposed to the Apple brand were slightly more creative afterward; people exposed to the Disney Channel brand behaved slightly more honestly. Odd as it sounds, there’s a sense in which people treat some of their products as role models.
Plans for the weekend
