Disclaimer: This blog is independently written and published by me. The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.
Take a moment and think about how you might describe yourself to someone you just met.
What did you come up with?
Our mental construct of who we are, which I will refer to as “the-self” or “self-concept” is often constructed by things like relationships, affiliations, and objects. For example, you may consider yourself… “a wife”, “a daughter” (relationship-based), “a New Yorker”, or a “a female” (affiliation-based), “a skier”, “a homemaker”, “a wine connoisseur”, “a cycler” (object-based).
Are you surprised that objects help define who you are?
Identity is not fixed. We often think our identities are quite fixed but in reality, they are much more malleable than we think, constantly being re-evaluated and re-defined. We are constantly adapting our view of ourselves.
Products and brands help us construct our social image
We are constantly managing how we come across to others, and we do this through our actions and our choices with little to no conscious involvement. When we choose products, we strategically choose products with desirable personality traits to signal positive aspects of who we are such as our beliefs and aspects of our personalities [2]. The more these products match to who we are and what we believe the more strongly we will attach to the brand and love the product. But we feel uncomfortable when the social reasons for our purchases are too obvious. Someone who buys a BMW to make them feel like they made it, will tell his friends that the reason for the purchase is the many features it offers that he cannot get elsewhere.
As product designers, the implication here is not to avoid status, but to embrace it in a hidden way. We should craft experiences that help elevate someone’s social standing while at the same time hiding this intention entirely.
We Judge ourselves relative to other people as well as other things
Researchers have found that we judge ourselves relative to standards set by not only relative to standards set by other people (e.g., the thinness of a model), but we also judge ourselves as well as objects we judge ourselves (e.g., how thin am I relative to the the thinness of MacBook Air). By affecting self-evaluation, such standards can shape consumer preferences.
We affiliate ourselves with brands and products that are congruent with our self-image in order to signal positive aspects about who we are. Thus, the product’s social job is to signal these desired traits.
Students feel smarter after choosing and using a pen with an MIT logo
Women felt sexier after choosing and using a Victoria-Secret bag
Owning a short (vs. tall) looking coffee mug lead people to feel shorter and less physically attractive.
We prefer products that match how we see ourselves
Products and brands are perceived as having certain “personality” traits that in turn reflect the traits of their users. When we make our buying decisions we attempt to choose brands and products that match our own self-image.
Here are some examples: A 2014 study found that participants gave more favorable ratings to an online store the closer the image of the store was to their own self-image [9]. Another study found that when women were made aware of the shape of a product, that those who perceived their bodies to be curvy, rated the curved products higher [6].
Marketers have known for a long time that consumers are significantly more interested in purchasing a brand when they identify with the personality of that brand. Thus, a fragrance commercial that is youthful, sexy, and sophisticated would be most attractive in terms of purchase intent to those that view themselves as having those same qualities [11].
Consumer Psychology studies have repeatedly shown that a match between the brand image to a consumer’s self-image (often referred to as “self-congruity”) influences consumption behavior-pre-purchase behavior (consumer attitude towards the product, preference for a brand, willingness to purchase the brand, and brand choice) and post-purchase behavior (satisfaction with the brand, brand trust and commitment to the brand and word of-mouth related to the brand). Even when we choose what store to buy our clothing from, we first construct an image in our minds of who the typical consumer is of that store and whether or not that imaginary person is like us. This creates real consumer value, generating sustainable competitive advantage and brand equity [10].
Why do we do like reminders of ourselves so much? In general, we are naturally motivated to behave consistently with our own self-perceptions. To do otherwise would cause dissonance, resulting in discomfort that threatens to invalidate our beliefs about oneself. Basically, we like to reinforce our beliefs and feelings of personal worth because that simply makes us feel good [12].
Products can alter how we feel about ourselves
It turns out that products can impact how we feel about ourselves in powerful ways. A 2016 study found that owning a short (vs. tall) looking coffee mug lead people to feel shorter and less physically attractive.
Other studies found that women felt sexier after choosing and using a Victoria-Secret bag, and that students felt smarter after choosing and using a pen with an MIT logo. Even receiving an object as a gift can impact our emotional state and make us feel worse about ourselves — consider that the next time you accept a hideous sweater at Christmas.
“Our findings suggest that when people acquire an object, not only do these people gain control over it, but ironically they also surrender control to it, allowing its traits to systematically influence the way they see themselves and behave.” — Liad Weiss, Gita Venkataramani
The mere choice of one design of one product over over another as demonstrated by the coffee mugs can influence how we feel about ourselves. When designed well, products have the power to affirm — they can help us be more secure in ourselves and in our values [2].
Psychologists have found that these kinds of affirmations of the self can actually change the trajectory of someone’s life. Here is an example: “Feeling affirmed, a student may perform better on the next classroom test, and performing better, the student may feel more affirmed, in a recursive process that lifts the student’s trajectory and eventually becomes a continual source of self-affirmation” [3].
Another example of how self-affirmations boost our ability to adapt and cope comes from a study on weight loss. Researchers looked to see how their overweight participants responded to health messages like “People who sit less are at lower risk for certain diseases.” It is typical for messages of this sort to evoke negative reactions — it is threatening and makes participants feel bad about themselves. They think things like “what if I sit too much and get a disease!”— and it’s common for them to just give up. Researchers found in this study that self-affirmation can prevent this reaction, because it reminds people that their self-worth has a broad foundation and thus the messages comes across as less threatening. The researchers found that the participants in the self-affirmation condition responded better than control participants to the health messages, becoming more active in the ensuing month after the study [4].
As the creators of products and brands we have the ability to craft affirmations of self that generate well-being and spur confidence to take on new opportunities for our users and I think that’s pretty awesome.
People ‘hire’ products to do jobs for them
These jobs can be functional and/or emotional in nature. Jobs have a desired outcome.
Functional Jobs: Tasks people seek to accomplish.Personal-Emotional Jobs: The way people want to feel
Social-Emotional Jobs: How people want to be perceived by others
“When purchasing an automobile, for example, a woman may want to be able to transport children from one location to another (functional job), but she may also want to feel successful (personal job) and be perceived as attractive by others (social job). A mom throwing a party for her child may want to arrange the party (functional job), but she may also want to feel loved by her child (personal job) and be perceived as a good mom by the other moms (social job).” - Jobs to be Done A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation.
Design your product such that it signals attributes about your customers or how they want to feel. Design your product such that it reaffirms the self and makes your customer better. It’s an amazing privilege to be a PM or designer and get to influence people’s perceptions of themselves in such a positive way.
References:
Products as Self-Evaluation Standards: When Owned and Unowned Products Have Opposite Effects on Self-Judgment
Liad Weiss, Gita Venkataramani Johar. J Consum Res (2016) 42 (6): 915–930. 2016. Products as Self-Evaluation Standards: When Owned and Unowned Products Have Opposite Effects on Self-Judgment.
The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention Geoffrey L. Cohen and David K. Sherman
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/11/why-self-affirmation-works.html
Multiple reference effects in service evaluations: Roles of alternative attractiveness and self-image congruity Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim∗, Kimmy Wa Chan 1, Kineta Hung 2007.
Ghoshal, Product Curvature or Angularity Preferences: A Theory of Self-Concept. 2015
Self-Affirmation through the Choice of Highly Aesthetic Products Author(s): Claudia Townsend and Sanjay Sood Source: Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 39, No2 (August 2012), pp. 415–428 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/663775
The Compensatory Consumer Behavior Model: How Self-Discrepancies Drive Consumer Behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2016
Actual and ideal self-congruity affecting consumers’ emotional and behavioral responses toward an online store Wanmo Koo a , Erin Cho, Youn-Kyung Kim c,1 2014
Routledge International Handbook of Consumer Psychology 2016).
http://gandrllc.com/reprints/usingselfconcepttoassessadvertisingeffectiveness.pdf
Lucia Malär, Harley Krohmer, Wayne D. Hoyer, & Bettina Nyffenegger. Emotional Brand Attachment and Brand Personality: The Relative. Importance of the Actual and the Ideal Self 2011
The Sum of Small Things
Status Is a Four-Letter Word. Self Versus Other Differences and Concealment of Status-Striving. 2014