Although one may infer that a person being alone is lonely, being alone and feeling lonely are not the same. Some people enjoy spending time by themselves and they simply choose to do so. They may not feel lonely when engaging in solitary activities. On the other hand, some people do feel lonely even when they are with their friends or family. Loneliness occurs when one’s level of social connection does not meet their desired level. The desired level of social connection varies across individuals. Thus, given the same quantity and quality of social connections, some may feel lonely, whereas others may not. Since social belongingness is a fundamental need of humans, loneliness, as an aversive feeling, acts as a warning signal that something is wrong, motivating people to restore social connection. Sometimes we respond by directly contacting other people. At other times, we turn to the marketplace.
People may respond to loneliness by using consumption to foster connection with other people directly. Research on threats to social belongingness suggests that people who are excluded during a group activity would subsequently be willing to pay more for an unappealing food product that is liked by an interaction partner, so as to increase their chances of social acceptance. They are also more willing to try an illegal drug if they think that doing so will enhance their chances of social inclusion. Lonely consumers also exhibit a stronger preference for products that the majority of other people like when their product preference is known to others. These responses make psychological sense. Eating the same food, wearing the same style of clothing or using a widely liked product can increase the probability of forming new social relationships as people tend to like others who are similar to themselves. Consumer products can therefore become tools to establish social connections. Retail space can also provide opportunities for human contact. For someone experiencing loneliness, visiting a local café or retailer may offer opportunities for brief conversations and a reassuring presence of other people. Indeed, research suggests that lonely consumers are more likely to use shopping as a social experience. Initiatives such as supermarket “chat checkouts” and the UK’s “Chatter & Natter” tables in cafés and other public venues are intended to serve this purpose, providing spaces in which customers can have a conversation.
Lonely consumers may also restore a sense of social connection indirectly through products. Researchers found that loneliness is associated with a tendency to anthropomorphise; that is, to attribute human qualities to pets, gadgets, vehicles or other objects. People may give possessions names, talk to them and describe them as if they have personalities. When products are anthropomorphised, they are more capable of satisfying the social belongingness need of the user. Consuming nostalgic products may serve a similar function. A familiar food item, song or household object may remind us of people and experiences from our past. Comfort food is comforting partly because it can activate memories of occasions on which it was shared with family or friends. Consistent with this idea, research suggests that nostalgia increases perceptions of social support. Researchers have even found that loneliness can increase interest in previously owned products. A second-hand object carries evidence of another person’s presence and hence, may offer a symbolic connection to its previous owner. This does not mean that people consciously think, “I am lonely, so I will buy this used book.” We may feel drawn to something without necessarily recognising the need underlying the attraction.
A sense of social connection may also be afforded by brands. People associated with the same brand, such as its employees and consumers, constitute a broad social group. Using an iPhone, for instance, symbolically links someone to other people associated with the brand Apple, even if they have never met. In my own research, I investigated whether loneliness could strengthen consumers’ passionate emotional attachment to a brand, what researchers describe as “brand love”. Across two experiments, people were asked to recall either a time when they felt lonely or a time when they felt socially connected. They then evaluated a brand that they frequently used and with which they were satisfied. Loneliness increased brand love but only for certain people. This loneliness-induced brand love boost was observed among participants with relatively individualistic cultural orientation and among White American participants, but not among participants with relatively collectivistic cultural orientation or among East Asian American participants. This may be because what counts as a psychologically meaningful social group differs cross-culturally. Individualistic consumers may regard strangers who share a broad social affiliation (e.g., people using products of the same brand) as members of their ingroup. Strengthening their attachment to the brand may therefore offer an indirect sense of social connection with those other brand users. By contrast, for collectivistic consumers, close relationships with family members and friends may be more psychologically meaningful than a shared brand affiliation with unknown others.
Overall, research in consumer psychology shows that loneliness can influence consumption choices and behaviours in various ways, and my own findings show that its influence on brand love can vary across cultures. What people buy, where they shop, and how they relate to possessions and brands are thus not always driven solely by practical needs or intrinsic preferences. They may also reflect our desire to establish social relationships or restore a sense of social connection, as well as our culturally shaped understandings of where meaningful social connection can be found.
