Does Your Brand Serve You, Or Feel More Like Your Partner? Materialists Feel Served
Remember Charlie the Tuna? Or Tony the Tiger? (I realize I'm dating myself). Most consumers enjoy it when advertisers anthropomorphize their products in branding and advertising. But a new study says some people take it too far, feeling superior to anthropomorphized popular products. I know it sounds a little crazy but hear me out. Newswise.com reports on a recent study by a Johns Hopkins University researcher that found that some consumers ― materialists who strongly link possessions to happiness and who tend to have poor personal relationships ― regard anthropomorphized popular products as servants over which they can assert power and gain control that they otherwise lack in their lives. According to Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Associate Professor Hyeongmin (Christian) Kim, the lead author of the study, materialists prefer a servant brand to a partner brand when the brand is anthropomorphized, and respond more favorably to an anthropomorphized se...