Cheap Chocolate On Valentine's
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We're here because your heightened awareness deserves heightened entertainment. The Last Show with David Cooper It's Valentine's Day, so you might want to get something sweet and romantic for your partner. Chocolate. Now, you might be a little embarrassed to buy cheap chocolate. You're embarrassed about what that means. There's a sort of strange social math that goes on when the price of what you buy becomes a personality test. And cheap chocolate can seem to be a character flaw. You fail the test. Well, I'm here to discuss just this with C.T. Suwanda, a marketing researcher at West Virginia University.
Why do people feel embarrassed buying cheap chocolate on Valentine's Day?
Hello, David. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited.
I know there's some deep marketing concepts that we're going to get to, like consumption stigma, but let's start here. If I buy my beloved, her name is Miranda, if I buy her just the cheapest chocolate I could find at the drugstore for Valentine's Day, what would most people think? What would be the default thought about someone receiving a gift like that?
Obviously, like many people, when they see you get Mirandelle like the cheapest chocolate possible, they would think, oh, my goodness, David, don't you love her? Why are you giving her the cheapest chocolate ever from the supermarket? So, yeah, they would think that way. And they would think that, oh, my God, David.
I need to do better. All right. But then on the other hand, like blowing at some of these fancy chocolate boxes can be like 80 bucks, 100 bucks. The prices can get really wild. On the other end, what would people think if I just blew all my money on chocolate and got her the fanciest gold leaf truffles, whatever? What would be the impression there?
Oh, they would definitely like applaud you for that. And somehow your love is equal with like the amount of money that you give them. But yeah, that's probably one of them for sure.
If we keep thinking this way, the corporations win. What should it communicate? Shouldn't I just buy her something like, hey, I think these chocolates are tasty. I think you'll think they're tasty. Who cares about the price? Shouldn't that be the way we look at it?
Exactly. I think the bottom line would be you should get any Valentine's chocolate that you want and you like and that is suitable for with your budget.
Okay, well, let's talk about consumption stigma. Is this the way we judge others and judge ourselves for what we buy really just based on price and nothing else?
Yes, exactly. So consumption stigma is when people feel judged or they can also judge themselves based on what they buy, use or avoid. So it's not about whether a product is good or bad, but it's more about the social meaning attached to it. So even in everyday things like chocolate, clothes or food choices, they can carry stigma if people think others will read these choices as saying something negative about them.
I whip out my iPhone mini. I think it's a 12 or a 13. I have it because they don't make a miniature one anymore, but now they're onto the iPhone 25. There have been people that made comments like, why do you have such an old phone? How deep does this stigma run? Like how likely is the average person to judge others based on what they buy? Like, is it just a few things here and there, or does this run a lot deeper than you might expect?
So I think the root comes from differences that you and these other people. So because, for example, because majority of people use hyphen 25, say, right, or 17, the newest one. And then when they see like, oh, David still uses iPhone 12 mini and that is different. And then somehow that puts a social meaning towards that consumption. Like you're not the same with us. And so like you're not one of us because you use like the earlier version and it probably somehow less than what you are. And so that's actually a very sad thing because you don't want to be stigmatized. Nobody should ever get that feeling that they're less just because of their consumption pattern, right? And so, yeah, it's just a very interesting, interesting thing.
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