Decoding Beloved Objects in 10,000 Words | Feifan 24

What This Episode Is About

We are speeding into an age of loving things.

Designer-brand plastic toys are being bid up to astronomical prices, earning them the nickname “young people’s Moutai”; using the latest phone from a certain brand has become “a symbol of status”; even when a luxury label puts out a “snake-skin bag,” it can still become wildly sought after.

Some people see this as falling into the “consumerist trap”—a sign that material things have become supreme.

But the author of this book, a marketing professor who has spent years studying consumer psychology, has found that loving things is not just shallow consumerism. The relationship between people and objects is not simply one of “using” and “being used.” Objects are extensions of the self, vessels for emotion, and—more than that—an important way we give life meaning.

What you love is, in fact, a declaration of who you are.

You’ll Hear

• Learn about the three psychological mechanisms that drive people today to go crazy over things
• Explore where people’s tastes come from through the lenses of psychology and sociology
• Look ahead to a tech-enabled future and how the relationship between people and things may evolve

Quote of the Episode

To a great extent, what we love is how we shape and express who we are through our choices. We use our choices of objects to build an ideal image of ourselves.

Collectible toys are powerful “social connectors.” Owning one is like getting a ticket into a particular circle, allowing people who feel lonely in real life to quickly find a sense of belonging and security.

Loving things means that, after our brains have completed the basic tasks of survival, we have the capacity and leisure to pursue pleasure, meaning, and beauty. Loving things is one way we give life meaning.

About the Author

Aric R. Ahuvia　Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan and the scholar who introduced the concept of brand love.