Political affiliation may not make a difference in everyday purchases for individuals, but it can play a role when buying for friends, family and co-workers, new research from the University of New Hampshire has found. This may have implications for gift-buying this holiday season and beyond.
Political affiliation may not make a difference in everyday purchases for individuals, but it can play a role when buying for friends, family and co-workers, new research from the University of New Hampshire has found. This may have implications for gift-buying this holiday season and beyond.
The study is published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
“We performed five different studies, each looking at buying different products, and asked people to make a choice for themselves and then a gift for someone they knew really well and found that politics played a bigger role when people were purchasing gifts, because that’s a case where people are making a decision based on how they think others feel”, said Justin Pomerance, assistant professor of marketing at UNH’s Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics and lead author.
In their paper, Pomerance and his co-author, Leaf Van Boven, professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, showed how political party played a bigger role than type of product.
