HOMO ECONOMICUS IS AS REAL AS PILTDOWN MAN:

Keys to consumer conduct? Try germs and vanity (ANNE MCILROY, 5/15/06, Globe and Mail)

A man is shopping for a long-sleeved T-shirt with a University of Alberta logo, but the only one left in the campus store is hanging up in the change room.

Will he want to try it on?

“The contagion effect” says no. Marketing researchers Jennifer Argo at the U of A and Darren Dahl at the University of British Columbia have performed a number of experiments that show shoppers shy away from products other people have recently touched.

They say fear of contamination — even if it is subconscious — is what makes many of us reach for the crisp magazine at the back of the stand or refuse to try a pair of pants still on the rack outside the change room. Put those same pants back on the shelf, however, and we are happy to pull them over our bare legs and underwear.

Dr. Argo and Dr. Dahl are part of a growing community of researchers studying the behavioural quirks of modern shoppers. And shoppers are quirky. Research has shown that we don't like buying computers in the morning, that only 76 per cent of us rule out the idea of buying used underwear, and that we are attracted by brand names that contain letters of our own names.

Such findings may never win a Nobel Prize, but the science of shopping is of enormous interest to the companies and retailers that make and sell the food, clothes, shoes and millions of other products we buy.