How Advertisements Influence Our Decisions

Overwhelming majority of people claim their choices are not affected by commercials. In a poll, conducted between 11/17/14 and 1/10/15, Meetville.com (dating app to find the right person) asked 44,076 people to answer the following question: “Do advertisements affect your choice a lot?”

People from all over the world took part in the poll: from the USA – 56%, from Canada – 5%, from Britain – 12%, Australia – 8% and other countries – 19%.

Adds definitely have a huge impact on many people’s choice, although sometimes thanks to them individuals give a priority to healthy products. Kiyah Duffey, a nutrition consultant, relates to the study from Netherlands and says: “Advertisements and key product placement can also influence our preference for and consumption of healthier food items as well. In this study, grocery store customers were given a flyer which either contained a health priming messages or did not. Analyses of store receipts showed that overweight and obese individuals purchased nearly 75% fewer snack food items when primed. Even more interesting was the finding that although priming only worked when people reported that they paid initial attention to the flyer, no conscious awareness of the prime during grocery shopping was necessary to observe these effects.”

Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, states: “People buy a product they actually don’t need just because it became a so-called “must have”. Advertisements make consumers associate products with some feelings and emotions, exactly these feelings can affect the decision to buy this or that product.”

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.