Could seeing dogs on the way to work each morning influence what type of sneakers you buy?
In a new research paper, Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger makes the case that what you see in your everyday world can influence your choices as a consumer. In the paper, "Dogs on the Street, Pumas on Your Feet: How Cues in the Environment Influence Product Evaluation and Choice," the first part of the title refers to the results of an experiment in which participants who were shown repeated images of dogs were quicker to recognize the Puma brand, and liked its sneakers more, than those who had not seen the images. Confused? It turns out that dogs are associated with cats, and cats are associated with Puma.
"Seeing dogs is not going to cause people to leap out of their chairs and go buy 10 pairs of Puma sneakers," says Berger. But the experiment does suggest that environmental cues, even ones you may not be consciously aware of, can influence what you like and buy.
"Marketers always think if they want a product to catch on, they have to think up a catchy slogan or come up with a slick advertisement to create a buzz," Berger says. Instead, his research suggests that companies can get a payoff by creating a link between their product and something in the environment. "We think of advertising as a way to remind people of products; putting up more ads should increase sales. But we should also think about linking products to the environment and let the environment do the work for us."
Berger offered the example of Tide detergent. The conventional thinking is that the more Tide ads consumers see, the more likely they are to want to buy it. Perhaps, he said, seeing waves on the beach (think ocean tides) may work just as well to stimulate consumer interest in Tide detergent.
Berger and co-author Grainne Fitzsimons, a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, report their findings on environmental cues in the February issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.
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