Deprived of bottled water for 2 weeks, students substitute with . . .
Tap water. That’s one of the startling findings of a clever study conducted at Southern Methodist University, the University of North Texas and Texas Christian University. The point of the exercise – in which students gave up a beloved consumer item for two weeks – was to discover how people adapt to new economic realities (the story appears in the Dallas Morning News). Some students gave up a brand of shorts, others jewelry, or flip-flops. The researchers discovered that study subjects either felt deprived or they adjusted to the new situation (regarding bottled water: “When volunteers couldn’t drink bottled water, they thought they were going to substitute other drinks, said Caitlin Christopher, an SMU senior advertising major. ‘But they weren’t satisfied with other drinks and drank tap water.’”).
To whom is such information valuable? Marketers. Learning how a product or brand (or its absence) makes us feel is essential to getting us to buy more of it. Can water utilities draw a lesson here? Doubtless. Now all they need are the multimillion-dollar ad budgets and the conviction that their “product” truly is safe to drink.
Elizabeth Royte is the author of 
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