Celebrity Contagion and the Value of Objects
Newman, Diesendruck and Bloom asked why people pay for objects once owned by celebrities and also by despised people such as notorious dictators. They compared three explanations, mere association, market demand and contagion, meaning the belief that an object keeps some trace of its previous owner. Market demand mattered, but contagion was the critical factor: changing how much physical contact the owner had had with the object strongly affected willingness to buy it, people's sensitivity to contagion moderated the effect, and measures of contagion principally accounted for how the possessions were valued. Subliminally activating the idea of contagion also changed willingness to buy.
Newman, Diesendruck and Bloom asked why people pay for objects once owned by celebrities and also by despised people such as notorious dictators. They compared three explanations, mere association, market demand and contagion, meaning the belief that an object keeps some trace of its previous owner. Market demand mattered, but contagion was the critical factor: changing how much physical contact the owner had had with the object strongly affected willingness to buy it, people's sensitivity to contagion moderated the effect, and measures of contagion principally accounted for how the possessions were valued. Subliminally activating the idea of contagion also changed willingness to buy.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-27 via the RePEc record of the Journal of Consumer Research article.
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Newman, G. E., Diesendruck, G., & Bloom, P. (2011). Celebrity contagion and the value of objects. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(2), 215-228. doi:10.1086/658999