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Holidays are noted to be one of the most wonderful time of the year. During the holidays, consumers are more like to spend or overspend money to shower their families, friends, and even coworkers. Many people never notice how they are influenced or urged to purchase specific products or participate in different events. We are interested in finding what promotes people’s behavior, motivation, and mood to participate in different holidays. We are manipulating two surveys in hopes to see a change in a person’s behavior, mood, and motivation towards a holiday.
According to Randy and Lori Sanson in the article, “The Christmas Effect on Psychopathology”, they discuss the existing empirical evidence regarding the effect of Christmas on psychopathology. They researched literature from the year 1980 to the present on two different databases. They used studies from other countries to get a better sense of the relationship. They discussed what they found in the different trends like mood disorders that related back to the possible Christmas effects on psychopathology. They found that there would be a decrease in psychopathology right before this holiday but also an increase following the holiday. This article highlights the fact that the holidays are not always exciting to people for different reasons. There are many positive factors that can influence behavior, but there are also negative factors like homelessness, financial hardship, grief, and etc. These conditions can cause people to shun the holidays and isolate themselves. Not being able to purchase and participate can change a person’s entire outlook on holidays but can also give them a reason to be grateful.
In the article “Does In-Store Marketing Work? Effects of the Number and Position of Shelf Facings on Brand Attention and Evaluation at the Point of Purchase” Pierre Chandon and colleagues examined the interactions between in and out of store factors on consumer attention and evaluations of brands displayed on shelves in supermarkets. They used an eye tracking experiment where they found that the number of facings does in fact have a strong impact on evaluation. They also found that obtaining in-store attention is not always enough to push sales. During the holidays, most stores have tendency to display their products earlier even before the actual holiday. By doing this, it catches the eye of consumers especially women. In the article “From Point of Purchase to Path to Purchase: How Pre-shopping Factors Drive Unplanned Buying” David Bell Daniel Corsten and George Knox explained how marketers try to get people to spend more money because they know that most purchases are not planned.
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All of the articles above are relevant and played a big part in helping us to develop and carry out this experiment. The goal of our study was to see if holiday decorations would promote holiday cheer. Maybe putting up decorations or anticipating putting up decorat
Method
This was a correlational study. The participants in this study were ages eighteen to sixty-four. There were both male and female participants (M=22, F=39). Most of our participants were college students who were currently enrolled, and the other portion of participants were college professors at Delta State University. We expected our sample size to consist of 60 participants, but we ended up having 61 participants instead.
Considering the demographics that we chose for this study our sampling method was very suitable. It was very important to observe the prospective of college students and professors because the experiment is based around people of that group, so we targeted a college. There were no complications to get to our participants seeing that one aspect of being in college is all about communicating with different people. We also wanted college students and professors from Delta State University because this school promotes diversity and we wanted to see different results in our surveys.
Having the participants identify their gender as either male or female and select their age range was important considering our experiment is about seeing who participates in the holidays. The survey contained questions concerning demographics. We used a rating scale of one to ten on five of the questions, so participants could rate how they felt towards the questions or statements listed. The questions concerning demographics were important because they gave us specific information about our participants that was needed in the experiment.
There were only two questions about demographics. There was only one yes or no type question and one question asking to identify a price range. We provided our participants with two different versions of the survey. The reason for having two different surveys was to see if a plain survey would have a negative attitude towards a specific holiday and if a decorated survey would enhance a person’s attitude towards that holiday.
Results
We were hoping to see if we could find a factor that encouraged people to participate in holidays. According to our results we wanted to determine if there was a significance between the two different surveys. Our hypothesis is that each survey would produce a different effect towards the Christmas holiday. There was a significant difference between the demographics concerning gender (p= .002).
This showed us that there were more women interested in holidays than men. Even though we did have more women to complete each survey than men we think that could be the reason our results show that. According to our regression analysis, we did not find any significance because the p-value (p= 0.138) is larger than the alpha level (0.05). The plain survey had more participants to have a more positive attitude than the decorated survey. This doesn’t mean that our correlation was meaningless.
Discussion
For our results we expected to have most of our participants to show a more positive attitude towards the Christmas holiday on the decorated survey. The decorated survey was made to promote a more positive attitude because different markets decorate their stores for different holidays. This marketing technique is to get shoppers in the mood to spend money in their stores. So, we figured if we could see if there was a difference between having a negative attitude or positive attitude from using the different surveys, we could see how marketers target people into spending money during the holidays.
We think our experiment matters because we think people should see how their mood, behavior, and motivation towards holidays is affected when certain factors are present and absent. So many factors contribute to how we act towards certain things and that is not a bad thing. It shows how we are influenced on a daily basis. How easy you are influenced depends on that individual specifically. Marketers are out to make a profit and will do any and everything to their full power to get what they want out of their consumers.
In the future we would probably choose to experiment on different aspects instead of just attitudes towards holidays. We would probably choose either a group of male or females within a specific age range to see if we find different results. We should monitor the amount of money people spend and deeply evaluate different marketing tactics that promotes overspending. This would really show us how much people are deeply rooted in holidays. Financially some people can afford to spend generous amounts of money but for what specific reasons we do not know. It would be great to see if we could find out.
