From Print magazine:
Brands That Will Make You Popular
For the most part, people like to associate with winners, consciously and unconsciously. When Doctors Neilissen and Meijers in the Department of Social Psychology at Tilburg University formulated research on brands and social structures they found,“Contemporary consumer culture can be characterized by its primacy on material expenditure as a means of establishing and defining social relationships.” In other words, the brands you wear influence the way people treat you.
In the Tilburg study, students were placed in several areas of a large mall and told to approach shoppers and ask if they would take a brief survey. Some surveyors wore shirts without insignia, others wore polos with a high-end brand logo. Care to guess who was afforded more time by shoppers?
Yes, those who wore high-end logos were obliged 52.2 percent of the time, while unlabeled surveyors got affirmatives just 13.6 percent of the time, prompting the researchers to note, “This supports the prediction that luxury displays yield benefits in social interactions.”
The same researchers also studied how a job applicant would be viewed based on clothes label branding. The results skewed toward the applicant with the luxury label who interviewers found more suitable for the job.