Research from Duke University suggests that people who are dressed up buy more and spend more than their casually dressed counterparts.
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, people have been “dressing down” more than ever. But recent consumer research suggests that for buying more and spending more, retailers do much better when their customers are dressing sharp.
Researchers at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business analyzed the shopping habits of two different groups of consumers. Smartly dressed shoppers — as in wearing dresses or blazers — put more items in their carts and spent more money compared to casual dressers (as in wearing T-shirts and flip-flops).
The difference among the two groups’ shopping behaviors were significant, too: 18% more items purchased and 6% more money spent by the sharp dressers.
The Duke University research findings were written up in a paper titled “The Aesthetics We Wear: How Attire Influences What We Buy,” which was published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.
According to Keisha Cutright, a Duke University professor of marketing and a co-author of the report, when people are dressed up they tend to have more social confidence, which in turn reduces the anxiety people may feel about making certain purchasing decisions:
“We focus on how your dress affects your own perceptions. When you’re dressed formally, you believe that people are looking at you more favorably and they believe you are more competent. If you feel competent, you can buy whatever you want without worrying what other people think, or whether they will be judging you negatively.”
Parallel Duke research also found that retailers can actually prompt would-be shoppers to wear nicer outfits when shopping at their stores by featuring nicely dressed models in their advertising. “So, there are some practical implications from the research for retailers,” Cutright says.
How about you? What sort of dynamics are in play regarding how you’re dressed and what you buy as a result? Is there a correlation between what you’re wearing and how you’re shopping? Please share your observations with other readers here.
Nones Notes 
Formality is complexity. It involves notions of respect and deference and beauty. It costs money. But our society has become less hierarchical in the information age. We no longer wear an “obedience uniform” in offices most of the time. The military still does, for obvious reasons. But in daily life we do not need to advertise our formal position on the ladder of existence as much as show our ability to think. Clothing seems to be mostly for comfort these days.
Lately, computer geeks show up at Starbucks wearing pajamas. Because of COVID, for all we know, at home they may not even be wearing pants.
Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t want to be a haberdasher. There’s not much you can do to a T-shirt to make it worth a lot of money …