Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Supermarkets: Enter Hungry, Exit With Chips and Chocolate

shopping-cookies

You know the cliché that it’s unwise to shop for food when you’re hungry? New research suggests it’s absolutely true. Two experiments—one in a lab, another that tracked actual supermarket purchases—provide evidence that famished food shoppers don’t necessarily buy more items, but the ones that end up in their carts are less likely to come from the health-food or produce aisles. “Even short-term food deprivation can lead to a shift in choices, such that people choose less low-calorie, and relatively more high-calorie food options,” write Cornell University food ... Read More

Rebates Aim to Foster Healthier Eating in South Africa

(PHOTO: PITI TAN/SHUTTERSTOCK)

The best public health stratagems are often the least overt ones. Consider New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent campaigns to cap the size of soft drinks and keep cigarettes out of view of young customers. Instead of picking up a sledgehammer—publicly shaming the industries’ heavyweights, or declaring an outright war on soda and tobacco—Bloomberg went for the ball-peen: he sought to redefine in New Yorkers’ minds the size of a “regular” Coke, from 16 to eight ounces, and to remove the visual cues that encourage us to make impulse buys, whether Marlboros or Reese’s ... Read More

Why Conservatives Prefer Walmart to Trader Joe’s

(PHOTO: TREKANDSHOOT/SHUTTERSTOCK)

The cliché that liberals shop at Trader Joe’s, while conservatives prefer Walmart, is no doubt overstated. But where would the perception come from? Newly published research provides a compelling answer: brand-name products. Conservatives gravitate toward them, and Walmart, unlike Trader Joe’s, is packed with them. That provocative conclusion can be drawn from a study in the journal Psychological Science. A research team led by Vishal Singh of New York University’s Stern School of Business has discovered a relationship between voting behavior, high levels of religiosity, and ... Read More

Want to Increase Retail Sales This Christmas? Keep It Simple (and Orange)

mallblur

While you're out doing your holiday shopping this month, you might notice a certain scent in the air. No, it's not the Spirit of Christmas (or not just that, anyway). It's the smell of pine. Or orange. Or fresh-baked cookies. There's a reason for that. Savvy retailers use all kinds of sensory information to convey their brand, welcome you in, and put you in a frame of mind that they hope will lead to more sales. Their displays are arranged just so. Their wall colors are carefully chosen. The music burbling through their speakers hits all the right notes. That fresh-baked-cookie smell ... Read More

Dazzle Shoppe: Animated Window Advertising In The Pre-TV Age

Frederick W. Schmidt's invention of an animated retail window diorama (Nov 1922 Science and Invention)

While walking through the Westfield mall in Culver City, Calif. last week my eyes were inundated with a seemingly endless landscape of screens all begging for my attention. The mall pulsed with a sort of pseudo Blade Runner glow. Rectangular human-scale screens at eye level bounced light at passersby while a probably 20-foot-tall video screen loomed over the Christmas tree at the center of the mall—simply wanting to be noticed, hoping to steal just a moment of your time. But long before the invention of the television screen (and the indoor mall, for that matter), the window display was ... Read More

For Americans, Mobility Breeds Uniformity

We Americans take fierce pride in our individualism, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at our subdivisions and shopping malls. From Boston to Burbank, we buy the same nationally advertised products at the same chain stores and restaurants, happily embracing conformity as we proudly proclaim our uniqueness. Why does our self-image fail to reflect reality? Researchers led by University of Virginia psychologists Shigehiro Oishi and Felicity Miao offer an intriguing answer. They argue our willingness to move far from home leads us to crave the comfort of sameness in our immediate ... Read More

How to Bolster Your Willpower at the Supermarket

Do you routinely walk out of the supermarket and find your grocery basket is filled with junk food? Have you bemoaned the fact that, against your better judgment, you can’t resist strolling down the cookies-and-candy aisle? Here’s an idea. Next time you walk into the store, don’t grab one of those little hand-held grocery baskets. Even if you’re only purchasing a few items, push around a shopping cart instead. It seems this simple switch could bolster your willpower. That’s the conclusion of the latest study in the fascinating field of embodied cognition — the notion, ... Read More

Being Frugal May Be More Genetic Than Learned

Shopping at garage sales, collecting soap slivers and other dollar-stretching habits — often derided as neurotic obsessions of the frugal mind — can now be blamed on the thrifty ways of a long-forgotten ancestor. Genetics, researchers say, has a far greater effect on consumer behavior than once thought. In a study of identical twins, which was published in the April edition of Journal of Consumer Research, marketing professors Itamar Simonson of Stanford University and Aner Sela of the University of Florida report that individual consumer preferences — for such products as chocolate, ... Read More

Generic Products Lower Users’ Self-Worth

Consumers purchase generic products for a simple reason: They cost less than their brand-name equivalents. But newly published research from Taiwan suggests shoppers who opt for store-brand items may pay a hidden price. Their credit card bills may be lower, but so is their self-esteem. "Even incidentally used cheaper, generic products have the ironic consequence of harming one's self-image via a sense of worthlessness," Yin-Hsien Chao and Wen-Bin Chiou report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. They found this dampening of self-esteem has potentially negative consequences ... Read More

Reweaving Tax Nets to Nab Online Shoppers

State and local governments across the country have been struggling since the recession began to pay teachers, fund health initiatives, staff police and fire departments and keep social services running. With the newest jobs report out Friday — unemployment nationally has ticked back up to 9.8 percent — the epidemic budget woes aren't likely to end soon. All of this means state officials will be cringing this holiday season at the thought that you may shop online. Sure, if you buy a lot for Christmas, it helps feed the economy. But if you're getting most of it from Amazon, your local ... Read More