Is being sneered at an important part of the luxury shopping experience? Maybe. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that high-end retailers take advantage of our human need to belong and seek approval in order to vacuum more money out of our non-designer purses. [More]
journal of consumer research
Closing Your Menu After You Order Could Make Your Meal More Satisfying
By 4.9.13
Call it what you will — buyer’s remorse, food envy or not being able to get no satisfaction — sometimes we order or buy one thing and just can’t get over the feeling that we missed out on something else. A new study say that dissatisfaction can flavor our experience of whatever we’ve just purchased, and the way to enjoy what we buy is to simply get some closure. [More]
100 Calorie Packs Makes You Fat
By 6.30.08
Smaller-sized 100-calorie snack packs are supposed to help with weight loss, but the problem is they don’t work. In an experiment published in the Journal of Consumer Research, subjects were primed to think about their body shape and then given bags of potato chips and placed in front of a TV. The group that was given nine small bags ate much more than those given two large bags, 46.1 grams vs 23.5. What’s going on? It appears that the smaller size tricks people into thinking they’re eating less, so they feel fine about chowing down more. Consumers may merrily consume the innocently small packages of Little Pleasures at an even higher pace,” wrote the study’s authors, “leading to over-consumption.”
