Free Republic

New research from the University of Alberta reveals just how self-conscious and easily influenced consumers can be. Through a series of carefully controlled experiments at a campus bookstore, researchers learned that consumers will, in every case studied, spend more money to buy a brand name item when someone they don't know is standing near them at the time they choose their purchase. Consumers also tend to spend more money when a group of people is standing near them but are more inclined to buy cheaper items when no one is near.

It's no startling insight to point out that presidential candidates sell themselves as if they were breakfast cereal or laundry detergent. So it was perhaps inevitable that this would be taken a step further by studying consumers ... er, voters ... along these same lines. Accordingly, a new survey asked respondents to define the candidates in terms of popular advertising brands. Bush supporters, for example, think Mr. Bush is Bud Light and Mr. Kerry is Heineken. Kerry backers see Mr. Bush as IBM and Mr. Kerry as Dell. The study, conducted jointly by WPP Group's Landor branding consultancy and Penn,...

Some cigarette brands are likely to be far more addictive than others, new research warns. For the first time, scientists have measured the amount of super-addictive "freebase" nicotine different cigarettes deliver to the smoker. Like crack cocaine, freebase nicotine vaporises and passes rapidly through the lungs into the bloodstream. Because it reaches the brain so quickly it is thought to be more addictive than normal nicotine, which stays in the form of sooty smoke particles. Until now it has not been known how much freebase nicotine various types of cigarette contain. The new research, from a team at Oregon Health...