What Halloween Costumes Reveal About Consumer Behavior
Photo by John Noonan, Unsplash
Credit the Germans for providing the perfect word to explain the joy of Halloween: maskenfreiheit. Maskenfreiheit is the freedom we feel from wearing a mask.
The concept of a mask is profound. A mask can hide the darker side of a person because it can erase one's responsibility for their actions. Darth Vader comes to mind. A mask can also bring out a more expressive, authentic, and less self-conscious side of a person. Think of Tony Stark, the capitalist turning into the empathetic life-saver Ironman upon wearing the mask.
Halloween is the one day out of the year when we can openly swim in maskenfreiheit. From the parent to the marketer to the student, we can leave our everyday identities at home. Halloween excuses us to wear an entirely new mask, a completely new identity that we don't own in our daily lives.
To better understand Halloween's unique effect on us and how it relates to our everyday consumer behavior, we must first understand the psychology of identities.
Consumerism and Multiple Identities
We act very differently when we're around our family members than we do around friends, and even from our colleagues. We are in beast-mode when we hit the gym early, move onto work-mode during nine-to-five, and jump into party-mode during the other nine-to-five on the weekend.
Social psychologists go far enough to say that we're a slightly different person. We dawn a unique identity with a slightly different personality, vocabulary, preferences, and behavior, depending on the context. No wonder brands market directly to our multiple identities.
Kix cereal targets mothers by declaring it is "kid-tested, mother-approved." DirecTV exclaims, "If you call yourself a sports fan, you gotta have DirecTV!" while Old Spice admonishes you to "Smell like a man, man" and Ford Trucks never lets you forget that it's Built Ford Tough (and American). The list goes on and on.
Research provides further context behind the strategy of targeting multiple identities. Consumers respond positively to brands and products which are perceived to share a common identity. For example, when you're at the gym in beast-mode, you'll show a preference for identity-linked brands, such as Gatorade, as opposed to brands that don't share the identity like Vitamin Water. Vitamin Water may deliver you just as many electrolytes at a lower price point, but it doesn't link to your athlete identity the same way. Gatorade speaks to the beast-mode directly, Vitamin Water doesn't.
The Psychology of Costumes
And here's where the everyday costumes come into play. For each of the roles we play in our daily lives (vegan, parent, lawyer, or K-Pop fan), there's a corresponding costume. When you put on your business suit to a meeting or your yoga pants to the studio, you're not just putting on clothes; you're putting on the associated identity. Uniforms create psychological transformation. Clark Kent enters the phone booth, and Superman exits.
A fascinating study done at Northwestern University reveals the impact of identity on behaviors. Researchers randomly divided participants into two groups: One group was given white doctor's coats, and the others, simple plain street clothes. The result - the group in the doctor's coats performed much better on tests of accuracy and attentional focus.
Why? Over time, our brain has subconsciously created an association between doctors and a sense of intelligence and accuracy. And by wearing the uniform, our brain assimilates these characteristics into our current behavior.
The same lesson also explains why we play better or at least have the confidence to play better when we wear the jerseys or branded shoes of our favorite athletes. All of these "costumes" cue identities, and along with them, their unique behaviors and personalities.
We are constantly putting on costumes and masks as we shift between our everyday identities. The only difference on Halloween is the costume we put on isn't linked to one of our usual, everyday identities. It's like an accountant dressing up as the clown from IT or the head of HR dressing up as a raver. And because of this, the costumes of Halloween provides us with a rare kind of liberation.
The Costume of a Consumer
Everyday identities are more predictable than you might think. So much so that simple aspects of your identity can predict buying behavior to a frightening degree. Researchers at the University of Chicago used machine learning to predict age, sex, race, political affiliation, age, and socioeconomic level of research subjects to a frightening extent by analyzing their purchases alone.
For gender, this is relatively easy - men don't typically buy women's makeup, and women don't typically buy men's razors and aftershave. Others are more surprising. For example, the best predictor of someone being white is whether or not they buy English Muffins. Similarly, watching The Big Bang Theory is also a key indicator for one's Caucasian descent. In politics, owning a fishing pole is the greatest predictor of being conservative. And the brand most closely associated with being conservative? Arby's.
One costume we all have in common is one of a consumer. We all buy things, and our purchases give away our identities. That might creep you out, but for now, enjoy the annual opportunity to shed identities and swim in your favorite mask. Merry maskenfreiheit everyone : )
Written by Matt Johnson, PhD
Published by Prince Ghuman
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References
Bertrand, M. and Kamenica, E. (2018) Coming Apart? Cultural Distances in the United States over Time NBER Working Paper No. 24771; NBER Program(s): The Labor Studies Program, The Political Economy Program
Hajo Adam and Adam D. Galinsky, “Enclothed Cognition,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48, no. 4 (July 2012): 918–925.
Jamal, A., & Goode, M. M.H. (2001). Consumers and brands: A study of the impact of self-image congruence on brand preference and satisfaction. Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 19(7), 482-492.
Reed, Americus, Mark R. Forehand, Stefano Puntoni, and Luk Warlop (2012), “Identity-Based Consumer Behavior,” International Journal of Research in Marketing, 29 (4), 310–21.
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