Imaginative names
I was doing some research online when I came across this cool study that was done at Boston College. Marketing professors looked at the positive response consumers have to imaginative names, even when they dont really describe the product. I wondered if I am the same and I realised that to a certain extent we are influenced by the name of the product especially if its unknown and ambiguous. Apparently people like to choose products with imaginative names so they feel as though they put some thoughts into making that decision. It kind of makes sense because nobody wants to think of themselves as been brainwashed by the marketing industry.. and yet they are constantly finding ways to fool us. Now the whole point is to make us feel like we know what we're doing.. Personally I do like to think about what I'm buying and why I'm buying it. What's making me buy a certain product over another etc. "The researchers also wanted to examine the effect of these product names in connection with incongruency theory. This theory argues that people make judgments by evaluating new encounters against existing expectations." Think about that: how many times do we try to figure out why a product has a certain name and wonder what it has to do with the flavor or with anything at all?!? This only works to a certain extent, if the name is too ambiguous it frustrates the consumer (Don't you agree???) .. Check out the study and tell me what you all think !!
posted by Suzy @ 5:07 PM
4 Comments:
OK I did read this and will comment more later..just wanted to say that this study seems better than the one I read about in the free Toronto paper (Metro?)
In that one they gave the nice smelling object a name of a horrible smelling thing.. and this caused them to sense it differently then the same object of a nice name. It does show some things but I like this report better as they are talking about pretty much made up names. If you tell someone something smells like rotting vegtables.. they are going to anticipate what they already know rather than being totally open.. ??
Thanks for your post Elizabeth! I am really happy that you got to analyze yourself. its amazing what we do and yet we dont stop ourselves from doing it.. We just think its "us" yet there is always a reason as to why we are the way we are....
Hey girl you haven't responded yet!
Hey Steve, ten years later .. i know but I realised I never did respond to your comment. I agree that we are told before we smell something affects what we're going to smell and how we're going to perceive it. Because its proven that mild smells especially are hard to distinguish for people, things like bananas etc.. you can tell the person that its something else and by the time they smell it they are pretty convinced it smells like bananas even though its not even close!!! Because our brain imputs info from the chemicals in our noses, as well as any memories we have of a similar smell plus our thinking.. so all that is needed to make a decision!
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