WHO Karmarkar & Bollinger
WHAT The concept of moral self-licensing
WHEN 2015
WHERE Harvard Business Review
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Doing something good can have unintentionally bad consequences.
Recent research from Uma Karmarkar, assistant professor of marketing at Harvard, and Bryan Bollinger, assistant professor of marketing at Duke, reveals that people who bring reusable bags with them when grocery shopping are more likely to purchase junk food.
Karmarkar and Bollinger discovered this trend by monitoring the typical purchasing patterns of ~1 million California consumers in supermarkets over two years. Here are their two main findings:
WHAT The concept of moral self-licensing
WHEN 2015
WHERE Harvard Business Review
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Doing something good can have unintentionally bad consequences.
Recent research from Uma Karmarkar, assistant professor of marketing at Harvard, and Bryan Bollinger, assistant professor of marketing at Duke, reveals that people who bring reusable bags with them when grocery shopping are more likely to purchase junk food.
Karmarkar and Bollinger discovered this trend by monitoring the typical purchasing patterns of ~1 million California consumers in supermarkets over two years. Here are their two main findings:
- Firstly, and not so surprisingly, shoppers who brought their owns bags tended to opt for the organic versus non-organic choice.
- And secondly, these same shoppers also bought more items like chips, ice cream. candy, and cookies.
Looks like there's something called "moral self-licensing" to thank for this ironic, but psychologically sensible, course of action. A choice made by an individual that paints them in an ethical, reasonable, or just generally positive, light, licenses the subsequent choosing of a more self-indulgent, frivolous option. Basically, doing something good (saving the environment from plastic bags) makes us feel like it is okay to indulge in something not as good (buying a pint of Ben & Jerry's Half Baked).
And, to top it all off, this isn't even happening at the conscious level. Explains Karmarkar, "We have some evidence that it’s the awareness of taking the action that triggers the behavior. It could be subconscious. I don’t think people are actively thinking, 'I’m using reusable bags, so I will get some doughnuts.' This is one of the reasons it’s interesting to me in the first place. Bringing bags to the store isn’t related to pulling products off the shelf, and yet it has an impact."
The advertising implications of these findings are very clear-cut and fairly evil: advertisers have the option to capitalize upon consumers who have just made a good choice and lure them to whatever they may be marketing that is less ideal.
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https://hbr.org/2015/04/reusable-bags-make-people-buy-organicand-junk