Consumers – materialists who link their happiness to possessions and tend to have poor human relationships – regard popular products as servants over which they can find power and control that they may lack in real life, according to a new study.
Associate professor and lead study author Hyeongmin Kim of Johns Hopkins University said that materialists choose servant brands over partner brands, and respond more favorably to them than non-materialists do.
The team published its findings in the Journal of Consumer Research.
Kim said in an interview that through advertising, companies position their brand as a servant or a partner. And while most consumers “passively” digest this information, they respond differently to signals.
A servant brand is a materialist’s opportunity to fulfill a need for domination.
“They would rather dominate other people, but socially that’s not an easy thing to accomplish. So, for this type of consumer, the next best thing is to dominate a servant brand,” Kim explained.
Kim and co-author Thomas Kramer of the University of California at Riverside produced four studies with around 1,100 participants, investigating their desire for dominating relationships and willingness to buy products based on a servant or partner brand presentation.
What then did the researchers find? In their desire for control, materialists respond to a brand’s human attributes. The brand should then be anthropomorphized or given human qualities, such as the Michelin Man or Allstate’s “good hands” logo.
Non-materialists, on the other hand, do not have the same interest in so-called “master-servant relationship,” preferring partner brands where trust is invested in the brand over a period of time.
Marketers have a stake in studies like this, as they could benefit from pitching brands in a servant way to regions and groups shown to be more materialistic than others. These populations include younger consumers as well as urban dwellers.
Older consumers and those living in rural and suburban areas, on the other hand, could be better lured by brands acting as partners.
Kim plans to conduct further research that factors in the role of smartphones and other devices in these dynamics of consumer behavior.
Photo: Les Chatfield | Flickr
