New Study Indicated Last Names Can Affect Consumer Habits
Last name organization during childhood may dictate adulthood buying habits.
Jan 22, 2011— -- Always hated being picked last in the alphabetical name game? A new study finds organization by last names during childhood may dictate your buying habits during adulthood.
"The Last Name Effect," published in the Journal of Consumer Research, found that people with last names towards the end of the alphabet are quicker to buy or be at the front of the line than those with names at the beginning of the alphabet.
Researchers Kurt A. Carlson and Jacqueline M. Conrad believe the habits are linked to childhood and constant alphabetizing during school. Children with late-letter last names tended to wait longer for things, and therefore compensate later in life, according to the study.
"The psychological driver isn't really about acquiring things. It's insurance that they get from the pain of missing out," Carlson said in a statement.
The researchers noted that children who have last names starting with the letters R-Z often found themselves at the back of the line, or in the last row of the classroom. As adults, these people would be more likely to "act on opportunities to make up for the inequality," they said.
But is it inequality, or just impatience? Carlson and Conrad carried out four experiments to test their hypothesis and found a person named Anderson would wait 25 percent more time than a person named Zimmer to buy a hot-ticket item.
In one experiment, Carlson and Conrad randomly emailed participants from social networking sites and told them they had the chance to win four tickets to a championship basketball game. Participants were asked to reply via email. The researchers found that people with last names starting with R-Z responded five minutes faster than those starting with A-I.
"Those with last names early in the alphabet will be so accustomed to being first that individual opportunities to make a purchase won't matter very much; they'll buy late," the researchers said.
For those who think they've escaped the curse of a late-letter name by marrying someone at the other end of the alphabet, Carlson and Conrad said women respond according to the name they grew up with. And for those with middle-letter last names, the study found no difference in consumer attitude.
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