Let's go get some designer clothes

I'm not a designer clothes lover. Actually, you can barely find designer clothes or brand name stuff in my closet. I just don't want to spend extra money for a logo on my shirt, advertisement for marketers, and something else I don't want. Make it short... I'm stingy. :) But after I read an article about experiment on designer clothes and people's perception, I changed my attitude.

Basically, a designer brand logo on the clothes you are wearing is a label of yourself. Rob Nelissen and Marijn Meijers of Tilburg University in the Natherlands conducted experitments to see if brand name logos on clothes had some effects on people perception. Here were experiments they did:

First Experiment The researchers showed pictures of a guy in polo shirt. All pictures were same but some with designer brand logos such as Lacoste or Hilfiger on the shirt and some without logos on the shirt. The result was that volunteers rated the guys with designer brand logo on their shirts were wealthier and had higher status (3.5 for Lacoste and 3.47 for Hilfiger, on a five-point scale) than the guys with no logo on their shirts (2.91 for no logo).

Yes... we can get higer scores when we are in designer cloth. But how is that important to our lives?

Second Experiment The researchers know that designer brand logo affected to people perception, then they want to know if that had some influent on people's behavior. The research sent their female assistants asked people in a shopping mall to stop and answer questionnairs. One day, they were there in sweaters with designer logo on and another day they wore the same design of sweaters but with out logo on. The result showed that 52% of people in the Mall stopped and answered the questionnaires with the assistants who wore sweater with logo while only 13% stopped and answered the questionnaires with the assistants who wore sweater without logo.

The number were obviously different. And if you are going for a job interview, you probably need designer clothes also if you know about the third experiment they did.

Third Experiment In this experiment, volunteers watch one of two videos of the same man being interviewed for a job. The man wore cloths with desiger brand logo on in one video and with out a logo in the other. Volunteers rated the man in cloths with logo as more suitable for the job and gave him 9% higher salary recommendation.

There were some other experiments showing that one with designer clothes were more trustable and were able to collect more money for charity.

Dr. Nelissen and Dr. Meijers said this is the same as why the peacock with the best tail gets all the girls. Also this mechanism works among human. If everyone perceive something in the same way, so that become the it become reality.

Source: The Economist April 2nd - 8th 2011