Why we love independence, individuality, and Starbucks
Last year, I drove from Austin, where I live, to San Antonio
to do a reading for my new book Smart
Thinking at a great independent bookstore called The Twig Book Shop. As I drove the 60 miles between cities I was
struck once again by how the highway landscape was probably nearly identical to
the one I would see near any metropolitan area.
There were Home Depots, PetSmarts, Targets, and of course Starbucks all
along the route (not to mention Macaroni Grills, TGIFs and McDonalds to feed
the hungry).
Why do the chain stores rule?
Much of this, of course, has nothing to do with
psychology. It is hard to run a small
business. There are lots of decisions
you have to make from scratch. And one
bad year or a downturn in the local economy can wipe out years of hard work
(not to mention a lifetime of savings).
Big companies have the benefit that bad sales at one location can be
absorbed as long as sales in other locations remain strong.
But there is an element of psychology in the success of
chain stores as well. This issue was
explored in a paper in the January, 2012 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Shigehiro Oishi,
Felicity Miao, Minkyung Koo, Jason Kisling, and Kate Ratliff.
They started with an interesting hypothesis. Americans prize individuality, but they also
prize mobility. We cherish the
opportunity to move to a new city or a new state to advance our careers or just
to get a change of scenery.
The researchers suggested that when people move frequently,
they may end up attaching themselves to chain stores. The anxiety of moving may lead people to
prefer familiar stores over the unique businesses that they may encounter. This proposal was tested in a number of ways.
First, the researchers asked a broad question using census and
corporate data. If people tend to prefer
chain stores more strongly when they move around a lot, then states in which
people move frequently should have more chain stores than states where people
move less often. The researchers
obtained the number of outlets of a variety of chain stores (ranging from Home
Depot to Kay Jewelers) from annual reports filed by the companies. Data on how often people move around was
obtained from the 2000 census. Using the
statistical technique of multiple regression, the researchers looked at the
combined influence of residential mobility (how much people move around),
median income, and population of each state as predictors of the number of
outlets for these chains. They found
that the amount of mobility really did predict the number of outlets of chains
in a given state. Population also
affected this number (not surprisingly).
Median income of families was not a predictor of the number of outlets
of chain stores.
So far so good. In
states where people move around a lot, there are more outlets of chain stores
than in states where people don’t move around so much.
But still, there are lots of potential reasons for
that. For example, states where people
move around a lot tend to be bigger states overall (like Colorado). Perhaps having lots of open space makes it
easier for chain stores to build big outlets.
In another study, the authors tested individuals. They brought 100 college students from the
east coast of the US and had them imagine that they were shopping on a trip to
California. They were given the choice
between shopping at a chain store (Whole Foods) or a local grocery store (Fresh
Mart) for 14 different types of stores.
The researchers measured how often each participant moved growing up as
well as a number of other personality variables. Even taking into account these other
variables, the number of times that people moved was positively related to the
number of times that people picked the chain store over the local store in this
task. That is, moving a lot increased
preference for chain stores.
These two studies are still correlational. That is, you can’t experimentally assign
people to move a lot or to stay in one place.
In the rest of the studies in this paper, the researchers induced a
feeling of mobility to look at its influence on preference for familiar things.
In one of these studies, participants either wrote about how
they would feel if they landed their dream job and that job required them to
move every 6 months for several years. A
second group wrote about how they would feel if they landed their dream job,
which required them to live in the same town for several years. Finally, a control group just wrote about a
typical day in their life.
After that, participants were exposed to a number of
unfamiliar faces five times. Research on
mere exposure has found that people
quickly come to prefer things they have been exposed to compared to those that
are unfamiliar. After seeing these
faces, participants rated how much they liked a series of faces. Some were ones they had seen before, while
others were new faces they had not seen before.
Participants who were primed to think about moving around a
lot showed a larger preference for the familiar over the unfamiliar faces than
those who were primed to think about living in the same place (or people in the
control condition). The researchers counted
the number of anxiety-related words people used in the writing they did at the
start of the study. The number of
anxiety related words was a good predictor of the strength of the preference
for familiar over unfamiliar faces.
Ok. I said a lot here. What does all of this mean?
The independent lifestyle that we often lead in the United
States creates great freedom. But that
freedom comes at the cost of our connection to community. When we move from place to place, we disrupt
our connections to family and friends.
We also force ourselves to adapt to a new house and a new environment.
In those times, we tend to attach ourselves to things that
are familiar as an anchor. There are
lots of things that we might use for that anchor. One of them is the places we shop. Shopping at a familiar chain store after
moving provides a sense of balance to counteract the chaotic feelings we might
have as we try to re-root ourselves in a new home.
