COLUMBUS, Ohio – A desire for expensive, high-status goods is related to feelings of social status – which helps explain why minorities are attracted to bling, a new study suggests.
Previous research had shown that racial minorities spend a larger portion of their incomes than do whites on conspicuous consumption – buying products that suggest high status. (more…)
Are you wooed by advertising? Of course you are. After all, it’s one thing to go out and buy a new washing machine after the old one exploded, quite another to impulse-buy that 246-inch flat screen TV that just maybe, in hindsight, you didn’t really need.
Advertisers come at you in two ways. There is the just-the-facts type of ad, called “logical persuasion,” or LP (“This car gets 42 miles to the gallon”), and then there is the ad that circumvents conscious awareness, called “non-rational influence,” or NI (a pretty woman, say, draped over a car). (more…)
