Society & Culture - Posted by Karl Bates-Duke on Monday, September 27, 2010 14:14 - 8 Comments 
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(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Are brand names lost on believers?
"Brands are a signal of self-worth," Gavan Fitzsimons says. "We're signaling to others that we care about ourselves and that we feel good about ourselves and that we matter in this world. It's more than 'I'm hip or cool,'" (Credit: iStockphoto)
DUKE (US)—For most people brand names are a form of self-expression and a token of self-worth, just like symbolic expressions of faith.
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However, the more religious a person is, the less those sort of brand expressions seem to matter, according to new research reported in the journal Marketing Science.
“People with a high involvement in religiosity aren’t necessarily as brand-conscious as people who don’t practice religion,” says Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of marketing and psychology at Duke University.
This is true at least for visible expressions of brand, like socks and sunglasses.
The team first conducted a field study in which they looked at several geographic areas for the number of Apple stores per million people, the number of brand stores such as Macy’s and Gap, and a comparison statistic they called the “brand-discount store ratio.”
Then they compared these rough measures of brand reliance against the number of congregations per thousand and self-reported attendance in church or synagogue, controlling for income, education, and urbanization differences.
In every analysis, they found a negative relationship between brand reliance and religiosity.
To zero in on the question, they performed four laboratory experiments in which feelings of religiosity were manipulated before subjects went through imaginary shopping experiences.
In a group of 45 college students, one group was primed by being asked to write a short essay on “what your religion means to you personally,” while the other group wrote about how they spend their days.
Then each group was sent on an imaginary shopping trip in which they chose between products shown two at a time, national brand versus store brand.
Some of the products were forms of self-expression, such as sunglasses, watches, and socks. Other products were functional items like bread, batteries, and ibuprofen.
The group that had been primed to think about religion was less likely to choose branded products of self expression. This was particularly true for publicly viewable products that could be used to express identity.
A second, Internet-based experiment measured the self-reported religiosity of 356 participants, and then ran them through the same shopping experience.
Again, those that were highly religious cared less about national brands for the self-expressive products. For the functional products, level of religiosity didn’t make a difference.
Two more experiments demonstrated that religion reduces brand reliance by apparently satisfying the need to express self-worth.
“We don’t think people are choosing these brands, consciously saying, ‘I want to signal to everyone how I feel about myself through this brand,’” says Fitzsimons. But sub-consciously, it’s likely a different story.
“Brands are a signal of self-worth,” Fitzsimons says. “We’re signaling to others that we care about ourselves and that we feel good about ourselves and that we matter in this world. It’s more than ‘I’m hip or cool,’”
He adds: “I’m a worthwhile person, and I matter, and you should respect me and think that I’m a good person, because I’ve got the D&G on my glasses. ”
So if you were the brand manager for a new kind of apparel, you might study the demographics of your markets in a different way, Fitzsimons says.
“If you knew that your target customers were largely more religious, that’d probably suggest the store brand path would be easier. If you knew that your customers were largely not at all religious, that suggests that you might want to focus more toward building a national brand.”
Researchers from Tel Aviv University and New York University contributed to the work.
More news from Duke: www.dukenews.duke.edu/
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8 Comments
Michael B
Greg H.
Michael B: Is that *the big difference*? Can’t see beyond the surface, can you? Oh yeah, “religion is an all-consuming brand.” Sounds like you don’t know many people who are religious, who can co-exist with a belief in God and have materialistic wants. If your worldview weren’t so simple, why else would you conflate religiosity with someone who will firebomb your house?
Aside from Islamists, who have perpetrated over 16,000 acts of terrorism since 9-11, people who are religious are taught to live in peace, protect their brother, and eschew the material world. One reason they are instructed to care less about brands is because brands are proxies for materialism.
If, however, you belong to the cult of materialism, then you will simply the rape of the earth to get materials to make stuff to feed the forever unsated emptiness in your soul that you rationalize can only be filled by the next purchase. God Bless you…
Erica J.
Greg H:
With regard to terrorism, only about 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have been perpetrated by Islamic Extremists. http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terrorism2002_2005.htm
By labeling all Muslims as pro-violence terrorists because of the actions of extremists, you are committing the same error of hasty generalization that you felt you needed to comment on when you posted.
Michael B
Fire bomb is an extreme I admit. But so too is campaigning against gay marriage. Seems you can’t see beyond the surface Greg H. I would love to meet these wonderful religious people you speak of. All the ones I know and have met want to force their view onto others and use either the bomb or some other method including legal discrimination!
Yes, religious people support others etc ONLY if you follow their way or if it s a way for them to gain points in their belief system. In reality they despise the downtrodden they supposedly help – listening to religious people speak about those they supposedly help has made my skin crawl at times.
And as far as the cult of materialism goes check out the churches in the USA – pastors with private jets and multimillion dollar mansions… yeah, right, all humble and peace loving.
Oh, btw, there is a fair amount of raping of the earth by religious adherents too. The earth is apparently there because “god” put it there for us… drill baby drill. And justified by a pastor with a rolex.
You keep going with your religious belief system, it seems to fill the shallowness of your reasoning quite well – we couldn’t want you thinking now, that would be a bad thing ;]
Jimmy James
Michael B. If you want to meet those wonderful religious people, then I could introduce you to my mother, my father, my grandparents, my sister and my brother. Pretty much most of the I love and care about. Your comments are blindly judgmental and angry. Please do not judge any religion, philosophy or idea based on its abuses. A majority of religious people, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu,… are wonderful, peaceful people. Perhaps you should take some time to examine the source of your angst.
I have looked at many sites but this is one of the most comprehensive that I have found.I have bookmarked the site to keep up with the content. Can anyone suggest other sites that may also offer me useful content?
El parasitismo en una economía de mercado es a menudo utilizado como una estrategia de marketing para aplicar, pero en nuestra vida cotidiana a menudo son “free-riding se realizará en un cebo, asegúresezapatos mbt
de tomar ventaja de que, si algunas personas son libres de montar obsoleta, no puede haber
This would make sense since religion tells us to care about what we think not what others will think about us, basically to be humble. The ones who are more religious must therefore believe that “someone” higher than humans care about them and not about the brand they wear.
Errr, religion IS a brand. Catholic vs Protestant, Sunni vs Shia, Wiccans vs Pagans, etc
Religion is an all consuming brand that subsumes other parts of your life and personality, hence there is no need to use other brands as identifiers.
The big difference is I’m not going to fire bomb your house because of your choice of sunglasses… perhaps some research into WHY people need to have an all encompassing brand to define their life may be more interesting ;]