Always Looking for a Bargain? This Trait May Be Inherited

Source: Adam Kring/Unsplash

When my father emigrated from India in the 1960s (by ship!) and arrived in the United States, he lived largely on a Ph.D. stipend and had little in the way of disposable income. Fortunately, he was content to live modestly within his means—according to family lore, my father’s most extravagant purchase as a student was a $100 London Fog overcoat that he bought after temporarily disembarking in the United Kingdom and experiencing harsh winter weather for the first time. (It was a coat that he kept for over five decades.) Initially out of financial necessity, my father quickly learned how to be a discerning and savvy consumer. He became adept at finding quality products that offered high “value for money." Interestingly, even after finishing his degree and securing gainful employment, my father continued to derive real pleasure from finding a good deal or getting a discount. For him, it was less about frugality and more about victory—he perceived each marketplace exchange between retailer and consumer as a chess match that could be won by awareness, shrewdness, and patience.

I've noticed in myself this same penchant for “deal proneness”—which has been defined as consumer responsiveness to retail sales promotions such as rebates, coupons, sales, offers, gifts, and contests. In fact, this tendency may have indirectly contributed to my decision to study consumer behavior and become a marketing professor. A few years back, my friend and co-author Robert Schindler authored a journal article in Psychology & Marketing (with Vishal Lala and Colleen Corcoran) documenting similarity in deal proneness between parents and their children, particularly if children were exposed to parental shopping behavior as teenagers (which I certainly was!). The idea that deal proneness is conveyed from generation to generation when children observe and model their parents’ behavior makes perfect sense.

Now, Robert, Vishal, and Jeanette Taylor have a fascinating new article just published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research that makes the more startling claim that deal proneness may actually have a hereditary component, as well. To test this, they recruited alumni from Rutgers University who were either monozygotic twins or dizygotic twins. Dizygotic twins have only half of their genetic material in common but monozygotic twins share all of their genetic material. Study participants individually completed a validated deal proneness scale in which they indicated their level of agreement with 32 different statements. An example of one of these statements is: “When I buy a brand that is on sale, I feel that I am getting a good deal.” The authors observed a higher correlation in deal proneness (as measured by this scale) between monozygotic twins, as compared to dizygotic twins. They interpreted this result as “evidence for the existence of a heritable component to deal proneness” (p.51) given that monozygotic twins share all of their genetic material. Curiously, this effect was relatively stronger for monetary promotions (e.g., sales, coupons, rebates) but failed to achieve statistical significance for nonmonetary promotions (e.g., buy one/get one, free gifts, contests/sweepstakes).

Even though other personality traits have been shown to have a heritable component, it's surprising to me that deal proneness—an individual difference variable with direct implications for consumers and marketers—may also have a genetic basis. Of course, the evidence for this claim is still somewhat tentative given the relatively small sample size (78 pairs of monozygotic twins and 43 pairs of dizygotic twins) and modest effect sizes of the JACR study. Furthermore, questions about how exactly deal proneness is transmitted and why deal proneness is more heritable for monetary (vs. nonmonetary) promotions remain unresolved and offer exciting avenues for future research. Nevertheless, I'm sharing these findings because I'm intrigued by the notion that deal proneness may not always be socially learned or borne out of necessity—as in my father’s case—but might actually be embedded into our DNA.