Images of Success and the Preference for Luxury Brands MANDEL, PETROVA, CIALDINI IMAGES OF SUCCESS

This research examines the impact of media depictions of success (or failure) on consumers’ desire for luxury brands. In a pilot study and three additional studies, we demonstrate that reading a story about a similar/successful other, such as a business major from the same university, increases consumers’ expectations about their own future wealth, which in turn increases their desire for luxury brands. However, reading about a dissimilar successful other, such as a biology major, lowers consumers’preferences for luxury brands. Furthermore, we examine the role of ease of imagining oneself in the narrative as a mediator of the relation between direction of comparison, similarity, and brand preference.