Inconspicuous Consumption

What it is

The usual picture of status consumption is the loud one: a prominent brand mark, an obvious price, a display meant to be seen by everyone. Conspicuous consumption is the name for that picture. Berger and Ward set out to test the assumption inside it, that explicit markers always communicate best.

Their paper argues that they do not. When branding is subtle, the message reaches only the observers who can decode it. Across the four studies, less obvious branding made observers more likely to misjudge a product, for example by mistaking an expensive item for a cheaper one. Observers who lacked the knowledge to read the cue read the wrong message, or none.

The same studies report who prefers the quiet version. People with deep knowledge of a product domain preferred the understated cues. The authors describe two reasons: the cues set those consumers apart from mainstream consumers, and the consumers themselves can read cues that other people miss. A signal that most observers cannot read does a particular job. It separates the people who can read it from the people who cannot.

In effect

The paper reports two conditions that strengthen the preference for understated cues. It was stronger when the product related closely to the buyer's identity, and it was stronger when the purchase was visible to others. The authors take the second condition as a sign that the signalling is aimed at outside audiences, since a purchase nobody can see has no one to signal to.

The authors argue that subtle signals carry real communicative value, with implications for branding, for how long a signal lasts, and for how identity is expressed.

The finding shares a structure with the red sneakers effect, reported in the same journal four years later. In that paper, a deliberate break from a dress code raised the status and competence observers credited to a person, and the effect disappeared when the observer did not know the environment. In both papers the signal does its work only for an observer who has the relevant knowledge, whether of a dress norm or of a product category. The two papers study different signals and different observers, so the shared structure is a point of comparison and not a combined finding.

Both also sit within costly signalling, in which a signal is believable in proportion to what it costs to fake.

What it does not say

The paper does not say that understated branding is better than prominent branding. Its findings are conditional: they concern which consumers prefer the quiet cues, and which observers misjudge the product.

It does not say that consumers who choose subtle cues are trying to hide their spending. The reasons the authors give are about distinction from mainstream consumers and about being able to read what others miss.

It does not measure the sales of a brand that adopts discreet design. The studies concern preferences and observers' judgements, and a commercial result would need its own test.

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