9 Happy Brands and Ethical Implications
Wonkyong Beth Lee and Timothy Dewhirst
Introduction
The attribution of human qualities to brands, through means such as personification or anthropomorphism, has become commonplace (Aaker, 1997). Much like people, brands may link to qualities such as success, sophistication, ruggedness, and happiness. Indeed, several brands have integrated happiness into their positioning or differentiation strategies, for example, McDonald’s “Happy Meal,” Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness,” and Disney’s “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Accounting for consumers’ insatiable desire for happiness, marketing communication linking brands with happiness has become ubiquitous.
It is easy to see why marketers commonly associate brands with happiness. Happiness is a desirable attribute and marketers seek to provide consumers with satisfying and pleasurable experiences. If brands can facilitate customers feeling “happy,” “joyful,” or “affectionate,” consumers are likely to express stronger attitudinal (commitment) and behavioral (purchase) loyalty (Chaudhuri & Holbrook, 2001). Satisfied consumers are commonly happy consumers who generate significant revenues for companies through consumer retention (Paliwal & Indu, 2013).
Brands integrate happiness into their branding strategies by seemingly cultivating happiness among consumers (Isen, Labroo, & Durlach, 2004; Mogilner & Aaker, 2009). While happiness often equals joy, pleasure, and satisfying experiences, brands associated with happiness also may suggest enhancements to consumer well-being and welfare. Nevertheless, happiness appears particularly applicable to hedonic rather than utilitarian consumption, and products pertaining to hedonic consumption may not ultimately be beneficial or healthy to consumers. In this chapter, we explore such dilemmas relating to “happy” branding strategies and provide case examples, including those pertaining to the marketing of McDonald’s “Happy Meal” and Newport cigarettes, which has the longstanding tagline “Alive with Pleasure!” “Happy” branding strategies raise a number of ethical concerns, especially those meant to appeal to children as a target market or those pertaining to addictive and harmful behavior.
There are several key ethical considerations concerning marketing communication that associates brands with happiness. With the advertising of “happy brands,” emphasis is often on short-term gratification (i.e., immediate pleasure from consumption) and overlooks the consequences of repeated and persistent consumption (e.g., highly processed food, alcohol, and smoking). The association of happiness with brands is commonly for products that are not healthful, yet are appealing to youth and children. More generally, advertising regularly infers that happiness comes from consumption and the acquisition of goods, which is especially problematic if children develop such attitudes and beliefs at early ages. Accordingly, marketers and other stakeholders, including policy-makers, need to consider the minimum age that may be appropriate for targeting purposes.
What is Happiness?
Check Your Understanding
Happiness
Happiness: Human qualities, such as cheerful, honest, charming, and successful are associated with a particular brand.
Philosophers have a longstanding interest in happiness. In particular, the hedonist philosophy of Aristippus of Cyrene theorized that happiness was the sum of material pleasures, and the meaning of life was the maximization of delight (Fromm, 1976; Layard, 2005). This hedonistic perspective of happiness was particularly influential in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continues in contemporary consumer culture with the belief of “having more” is “being more” (Fromm, 1976). According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (2009), happiness is “a state of well-being and contentment; a pleasurable or satisfying experience” (n.p.). Despite considerable attention among psychologists and consumer researchers, happiness is problematic to observe and a difficult construct to define (Mogilner, Aaker, & Kamvar, 2012; Robbins, Francis, & Edwards, 2010).
Psychologists commonly define happiness as a human personality trait (i.e., something that is comparable, measurable, and predictable across contexts) (Diener, 1984; Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Eysenck, 1983; Gilbert, 2006; Layard, 2005). For example, happiness is stable extraversion and the ability to have pleasant interactions and easy sociability (Eysenck, 1983). A necessary component of defining happiness is the presence of good social relationships (Diener & Seligman, 2002). Data support that happiness accompanies stable extraversion (Robbins et al., 2010). Various individuals experience happiness as a trait in the same way (Layard, 2005; Myers & Diener, 1995).
Other psychologists use subjective well-being as a construct to describe happiness (Diener et al., 1999), which reflects happiness as a non-physical state that we cannot measure objectively. Subjective well-being is “the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his/her own life-as-a-whole favorably” (Veenhoven, 2001, p. 4). Myers and Diener (1995) discovered that frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and a global sense of satisfaction with life equates with high subjective well-being.
Regarding subjective well-being, Gilbert (2006) describes that happiness means distinct things to different individuals, and given everyone has unique lives, we should create a unique view of happiness. For example, happiness is a feeling of excitement to some people, yet a feeling of calmness to others (Mogilner et al., 2012). Happiness is not set, and it systematically changes over an individual’s life span (Mogilner, Kamvar, & Aaker, 2011). Although not everyone defines happiness in the same way, some similarities within a given culture or age group exist. To illustrate, younger people tend to find greater happiness in extraordinary experiences, whereas older people usually find greater happiness in ordinary events (Mogilner & Norton, 2015).
What Makes People Happy?
This longstanding question has attracted the attention of many researchers. In particular, psychologists have identified several predictors of happiness: extraversion, assertiveness, cooperativeness, high self-esteem, the ability to savor positive events, satisfying and close relationships, and an engagement in leisure activities (Argyle & Lu, 1990a, 1990b; Bryant, 1989, 2003; Bryant, Smart, & King, 2005; Layard, 2005; Lu & Argyle, 1991, 1992, 1994; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2007).
What about the role of money? Does money buy happiness? In a seminal paper from 1974 by economist, Richard Easterlin, he observed that wealth increases, in several countries in the years after World War II, did not associate with increases in average happiness. This observation became Esterlin’s paradox (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2008). Although income may increase in a given country, disparity is likely to persist – there are still many people who become richer and poorer – and relative income, on balance, likely remains the same (Argyle, 1999; Diener, Lucas, & Napa Scollon, 2006; Easterlin, 1995; Frey & Stutzer, 2002). Nevertheless, other scholars have started critiquing and reassessing the Easterlin paradox. Stevenson and Wolfers (2008) have shown a positive relation between income and happiness with more comprehensive data: the richer in a given country are more satisfied with their lives than the poorer, and this pattern is consistent in most countries around the world. Based on a United Nations–sponsored report, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, and Finland are the “happiest” countries in the world (Rahim, 2017). Interestingly, Scandinavian countries, which generally have wealth, but high taxes and lessened economic and social
