14 DAY TRIAL // A new study carried out by researchers at Tilburg University concluded that benign envy sells iPhones and malicious envy will influence consumers to choose a BlackBerry.
It does not matter much whether the comparison is on phones or on something else, the idea behind the study is that people are willing to pay more for things that arouse their envy, but the researchers found out that this happens only if they are motivated by a positive, benign envy.
The reason for which the authors chose cell phones is rather obvious in today's society, so using these two products, they studied the differences between benign and malicious envy.
After a series of experiments, they concluded that only benignly envious people could possibly pay more for the products that they wanted, whereas maliciously envious people were more susceptible of paying more for products that were related but different.
The example the authors give is people who were maliciously envious of iPhone owners, were more likely to pay more to buy a Blackberry.
For the experiments, participants were asked to imagine they were jealous but admiring – Benign Envy condition, or jealous and begrudge – Malicious Envy condition, on a student owning an iPhone, or simply to imagine they really like it (the control condition).
The authors wrote that “studies showed that people who had been made envious of someone who owned an iPhone were willing to pay 80 Euros more on average.”
Authors Niels van de Ven, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Rik Pieters managed to make some serious discoveries thanks to this study.
They explain that “benign envy exists if the advantage of the other person is deserved, and motivates people to attain a coveted good or position for themselves.
“This more motivating type of envy makes people pay an envy premium for the products that elicited their envy.”
On the other hand, if the other person is believed to be undeserving of what they have, than malicious envy occurs, strengthening the desire of 'pulling down' the other individual.
It is very important to know that different kinds of envy determine different behaviors, especially for companies that choose a certain advertising strategy.
The authors suggest that companies who have celebrities representing their products, should make sure that these stars have rightfully earned their status.
“If they do not, these celebrities might actually trigger malicious envy and the sales of products from a competitor could even go up,” the researchers added.
The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research.