Brands that exude warmth will hit the mark with lonely consumers

“The compensation they get from a brand is powerful,” he adds, providing a degree of comfort and “making up for missing human relationships”.

In the study, published in the academic journal Psychology and Marketing, Murray and co-authors Soyoung Kim and Sarah Moore note that 40% of respondents to a 2018 US survey reported feeling isolated some, or all, of the time and that their relationships were not meaningful.

That same year, the British government created a so-called ‘ministry of loneliness’ (under the Minister for Civil Society) to tackle a growing social epidemic with harmful health consequences – estimated to be equal to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

A better brand partner?

To examine the relationship between social exclusion and branding, researchers began by having 130 undergraduate students play a ball-toss video game called Cyberball, which is often used to study ostracism and exclusion. Participants believed they were playing with two or three team members; in fact, those teammates were controlled by the programmer.

One group of participants were never thrown the ball, a condition meant to elicit feelings of exclusion. A second group received passes and therefore were more likely to feel included in the game.

As they left, all participants were offered a choice between two gift bags of appreciation: one with a Tide laundry detergent logo, the other labelled with the cuddly bear of Snuggle detergent.

“The people who were excluded in the game tended to choose the bag with the Snuggle bear,” explains Murray. “They felt the Snuggle bear would be a better laundry detergent partner.”

The research team continued with four other experiments involving hundreds of participants in varying scenarios. Some wrote about their life experiences with social exclusion and consumer behaviour; others responded to their impressions of fictitious ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ clothing brands.

“Across five studies, our findings suggest that socially excluded consumers prefer warm over less-warm brands,” says Murray.

The Snuggle is real

The authors also found self-acceptance played a role in brand preference.

Among those who felt included, the choice between Tide and Snuggle brands depended on how comfortable they felt about themselves. Those who reported high self-acceptance opted more often for Tide, whereas those with low self-acceptance went for Snuggle.

Among the excluded group, self-acceptance made little difference to their choice. Nor did they change their minds when told Snuggle may not clean as well as Tide. Rather, they continued to prefer the warmer, fuzzier brand.

According to Murray, the study’s results offer important lessons for companies designing brands.

“If you can be a warmer, more caring brand, you can actually make people feel better, and that will make them better customers,” he explains. “They’re more likely to be loyal and more likely to choose you.”

“If you’re a colder brand and this trend in increased loneliness continues, you’re going to struggle.”

You can read more about the study ‘Some like it warm: How warm brands mitigate the negative effects of social exclusion’ here.