Single People Shop Differently Than Those in Relationships

According to a new study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, it would appear that lonely people tend to shop differently than their peers who are in stable relationships, or married. The research is part of a larger investigation on social networks.

The paper also revealed that more people report feeling alone and socially isolated today than they did decades ago. Researchers did not expect to find this result, since people are now interconnected online to a degree never-before though possible.

Still, the research showed that as many as 1 in 4 people living in the United States report feeling lonely, and having no one to discuss important matters with. Apparently, this feeling is also influencing these individuals' shopping patterns.

The work was conducted by University of Iowa expert Jing Wang, University of British Columbia (UBC) scientist Rui Zhu and Stanford University researcher Baba Shiv, PsychCentral reports.

“Despite the popularity of Wi-Fi technologies and social networks such as Facebook, Americans are more socially isolated than two decades ago,” the team explains in the paper. Researchers add that the study was led to determine how lonely consumer react to social consensus information.

“Consumers often construct their preferences based on consensus-related cues and prefer majority-endorsed products,” the team explains. However, this is not the case for lonely individuals. This group appears to prefer products that are only endorsed by a minority (less than 20 percent) of consumers.

At the same time, the team determined that lonely individuals had no tendency to make their preferences known. In other words, they did not necessarily want others to know about the class of products they preferred to endorse.

“Lonely people’s preference for the minority-endorsed products was only found when their preferences were kept private. They switched to majority-endorsed products once their preferences became public,” the research team explains.

The new findings could be of great use for advertisers. Companies will from now on be able to conduct specific campaigns targeted at this previously-untapped segment of the general population.