Brands can help vent relationship frustration: study

Feeling frustrated with your romantic partner? Buying youself a brand that is the opposite of what your partner prefers could make you feel better, a new study suggests.
Reseachers found that this strategy was used consistently by partners who were lower in relationship power.
Imagine, for example, that you wake up to get ready for work and find dirty dishes in the sink.
People higher in relationship power would ask their partners to do the dishes, but someone lower in power is less likely to express this because they are worried about harming the relationship, said Danielle Brick, an assistant professor at the University of New Hampshire in the US.

"By unconsciously choosing the opposite brand their partner prefers, people might feel better without realising it," Brick said.
"We found that consumers are using brand choice as a form of behaviour to deal with conflict in relationships," she said.

The researchers found this pattern in three different experiments. In one of the studies, participants filled out a survey that measured their relationship power.
Then they answered questions about their partners' preferred brand choices in six categories, including coffee, toothpaste and shoes.
Then participants were told that they would complete a visual acuity task related to letters, but in reality they were subconsciously seeing their partners' names and words that evoked either frustration, sadness or neutral emotions.

Finally, the participants were asked to choose what brands they preferred in the same six categories.
The researchers found that the partners who were low in relationship power and had been primed to feel frustrated were more likely to choose brands opposite to what partners preferred, otherwise known as "oppositional brand choices."
People who were low in relationship power and primed with feeling sadness, however, were more likely to pick the same brand their partner preferred.
"When people are sad, they tend to be more passive because they are ruminating, so they are not feeling actively oppositional towards their partners," she said.

For partners who are feeling frustrated with their significant others, the study suggests that oppositional brand choices may be even more effective than venting or doing nothing in the face of relational conflict.
The findings also have implications for marketing, Brick said.
"Marketers assume consumers are making conscious, deliberate choices, but actually there are other factors, sometimes even outside of their conscious awareness that are influencing their decisions," she said.