Too close? Too cold? Too calm?

MARKETING: Figuratively, you might “step back” to get an overview of a situation. When deciding which of two objects you want to buy, literally stepping back could help you to choose more quickly.

According to research on consumer behaviour at the University of Toronto and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, people made choices faster when they put distance between themselves and objects shown to them on a screen. “Those who leaned toward the screen found the choice to be more difficult and were more likely to defer the choice than those who leaned away from the screen,” wrote the authors.

Other recent marketing studies, too, show that physical factors can influence what we buy, and when. For example, being physically cold encourages us to watch romantic comedies. Why? We want to warm up. The authors, from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Colorado, Boulder, explain it this way: “We often think of love as being warm. This link between love and warmth appears in everyday language, songs and poems.”

"The link between love and warmth appears in everyday language, songs and poems."

And the best way to our hearts is to promise us happiness. But how does a product make us happy? It depends on how old we are, it seems. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and MIT discovered that younger people prefer brands that promise excitement. Older consumers tend to buy brands that offer calmness. The studies are published in the Journal of Consumer Research.