Is a £400 handbag really necessary????

After a recent conversation with my mum about how much I want one of the new season Marc Jacob’s handbag, which was so nice I died a little bit inside, she told me “You should stop wanting things” to which I replied, “Well I’ll buy it then and I won’t want it anymore”….

Perhaps this wasn’t the response she was looking for, but it did make me think, is £400 excessive for a handbag?  After much deliberation between my head and my heart (or my head and my purse), I came to the conclusion that it was a bit ridiculous to spend £400 when I could buy at least 10 (or even 20) really nice bags for the same price.

I claimed I didn’t want the bag for the Marc Jacobs name.  I tried to convince myself (successfully) that the bag in its own right was the reason I wanted it, for the beautiful design and the way it was finished so perfectly.  But had the designer name changed my perception of the bag and made me believe it was more beautiful than it really was?

If you have studied branding and psychology at some point, I’m sure you’re aware of the Pepsi paradox, if not I’ll explain it briefly for you.  Researchers found that consumers preferred Coca-Cola in a taste test where you could see brand information for both Pepsi and Coca-Cola.  However, when branding was hidden and it was a simple blind taste test, more consumers preferred Pepsi, suggesting that the branding of the drinks changed the participants’ perception of the attributes of the product and actually found it more pleasing……

This is a basic low end product, but does branding have the same (or similar) effect on high end designer fashion?

Firstly, Marc Jacobs can be seen as a “Prestige Brand”, that is one which is a symbol of social status and wealth and is expensive……..normally very expensive.  Consumers perception of prestige brands based upon previous experiences of the brand (both aspirational and peer reference groups), the actual attributes of the product and the hedonic values of the product (how the product makes the user feel).

Consumers may seek out the Marc Jacobs bag for a variety of reasons.  A consumer with a high disposable income with a similar social circle may want the bag to conform and fit in with their friends, while a poor lowly student (like me) may want the bag to show off and to gain approval of others.  The Marc Jacobs bag is probably a lot better made than a standard high street bag and so offers better quality and thus someone who is obsessed with detail may seek the bag in order to satisfy their perfectionist characteristics.  As you can see from the video, the process for one of these bags is probably a lot more time consuming and completed by hand than cheap bags…There isn’t a great deal of research surrounding prestige brands, however I came  across some really interesting articles surrounding the topic which are definitely worth a read.

 

Research has suggested that high status Prestige brands actually cause consumers to feel aroused by the product and the consumer is more likely to have a positive perception of a product than other brands.  Also, it has been found that these Prestige Brands (such as Marc Jacobs) are purchased for status consumption – in order to impress others and for conspicuous consumption – in order to display wealth (and the fact you can afford to pay £400 for a handbag…….which is actually one of the cheapest bags in the range).

So…..I probably wanted the bag to show off to my friends that I had been working so much over summer I could afford it and because it elicited arousal and made me believe that it was more pretty in my mind than in reality (although I strongly disagree with that last one since it definitely was amazing in reality).

Bright Lights of London Town…Well M+M World London

When I visited London in January, I didn’t really have any opinion about M+M’s.  I knew I liked them and that they were nice chocolates but I was impartial.  After visiting M+M world in Trafalgar square, I developed a new found love for the brand and for the clever techniques that they had used to create an in store experience unlike any other I had seen previously or seen since….

The above diagram is taken from (Turley & Milliman, 2000) which looks at the instore environment and how it influences buyer behaviour.  In my opinion, M+M world takes most of the factors into consideration.  This post will discuss some of those factors and try to understand why they work and how M+M world is such a clever store.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PODEw64vy1A

One thing that is clear from the video is the noise.  Inside the store is loud and in your face both visually and  and   The store blasts out popular music which creates a lively and vibrant atmosphere and can increase the customers attention to products and the environment (Yalch & Spangenberg, 2000).   This increases the sales within the store as consumers will have higher levels of arousal due to the crazy environment. 

The colours within the store are SO bright it certainly wakes you up when you enter the store (which I happened to visit at about 10 o’clock at night), but the lighting and fluorescent tubing around the store pulled me in.  It turns out that colours within a store also have an effect upon emotions and purchasing decisions.  Due to the cultural association that people have between colour and various meanings, different colours can convey different messages.  Since M+M world has a rainbow of colours inside, it can target lots of different messages and thus lots of different people, meaning that they can form an emotional connection with every customer. Through the emotional connection, it is likely that customers will pay for the overpriced memorabilia (which is actually really cool but just really expensive…..especially to a student).

 

 

Now, what else can M+M add to the environment which can’t be seen?…..The smell of chocolate of course.  Personally, I did not appreciate the random bursts of chocolate scent as I was wandering around the store, mainly because it was clearly the manufactured smell, but also because I’d just finished my consumer psychology 3^rd year module and knew it was a ploy to get me buying things.  Cleverly, M+M was playing on the fact that smells can elicit emotional responses and the smell of chocolate has even been shown to cause an increase in dopamine levels which can elicit a positive affect which can have an impact upon purchasing behaviour.  The smell of the chocolate causes both an emotional and behavioural change which shows the power that the atmosphere holds upon consumers.  For the scent to work within a store, it needs to match the environment and of course, M+M chose the smell chocolate which matches the product (Chebat & Michon, 2003).

One thing that I found annoying about the store was the staff.  I personally don’t appreciate the overfriendliness and being asked a million times whether I needed any help.  However, their energy did inject fun into the store and as the video shows, they do help the store to come to life and create a magical world of excitement and happiness.  As I entered the store, I was handed a shopping bag, a present from them to me, but I knew that it was just another ploy to get me to buy more products.  The reciprocity theory states that we are more likely to do something else for someone, if they have done something for us.  So, in a retail environment, if we are given a basket, it makes us more likely to make more purchases, research suggests that it can make us buy significantly more products (Wu et al, 2010).  Simple idea yet highly effective at increasing revenue.

Overall, I feel that if you are interested in the atmosphere in a retail environment, M+M world is a perfect example (Class trip anyone?).  It really is one of the most interesting stores I’ve been to, from both a Consumer Psychology and a personal perspective and if you get the chance I’d highly recommend it.

Cute and Fluffy: Secret of Success???

If you know me, you know I’m a fan of anything cute, pretty, cuddly, sparkly and/or fluffy.  You’ll also know that I’m prone to moments of complete stupidity (aka blonde moments), so when I saw that an advertising agency in Toronto was going to have a “catvertising” division, I genuinely thought that it was a real concept.  After coming to the conclusion that it was satirical (after a few minutes), I thought about the use of animals within advertising.  Many businesses use animals as part of the branding and promotion of a product, so it must be a useful technique, but why is it so successful???

I absolutely love animals to the point where I, a twenty-one year old,  mature and intelligent masters student bought myself a hamster, who has since become part of my family.  As it turns out, I’m not as crazy as I first thought, as 92% of pet owners view their pets as family members (American Pet  Product Manufacturers Association, 2006).  Marketers use the strong emotional bond that pet owners feel with their pets to persuade consumers to make purchases and to gain their loyalty through connecting with the emotions they feel about their pets  (Holbrook et al, 2001).

It appears that consumers are influenced by the cuteness and likeability of animals and the cultural symbolism that they represent (Spears et al, 1996) and advertisers use this to their advantage.  A prime example of a company using an animal in their advertisements is Andrex and the Andrex puppy (which has become famous since it’s difficult to think of the brand without thinking of the puppy).  They have been using puppies in their adverts for 40 years and they came up with the perfect puppy formula.  In order to maximise cuteness (which in turn maximises success of the advert) they have discovered that puppies age 6-8 weeks are the perfect and I have to agree that they do make me smile every time I see an advert.  If I wasn’t a student limited to the “value” ranges of toilet paper, the first brand I would grab at the supermarket would be Andrex since I have associated the characteristics of the puppy in the advert “Soft,  Strong and unbeatably long” with the toilet paper.

When Andrex chose to digitalise the puppies and use CGI adverts where puppies I was enraged, to the point where I switched off the advert and refused to watch it.  It seems I’m not the only one who disagrees with the use of the CGI puppy since there is Facebook hate groups and news articles which slate the new image that Andrex has chosen to use.  This impact of the advert could make the Andrex brand less popular and lower future sales since they have chosen to break with their traditional “real-life” puppy, to break into the CGI world which has been unpopular with many consumers.

Research has suggested that brand recognition is strengthened by emotion which is weakened by attention and so advertisers can use animals to elicit an emotional response to try to increase brand awareness and targeting the message at lower levels of attention (Heath, Brandt & Nairn, 2006).  The Andrex puppy adverts are simple, effective and cause a positive attitude towards the brand.  Reseach by (Phillips,1996) suggests that adverts which contain animals elicit good relationships between a brands and the consumer and so in order to be successful, adverts should focus on animals (especially cute and fluffy ones).