Brand disputes make couples unhappy

Research suggests preferring different brands can affect our happiness in relationships more than shared interests or personality traits. (Getty)

We know an everyday choice, like buying a certain type of toothpaste, isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but when you’re in a relationship, it can be a source of contention.

According to a recent Duke University study , preferring different brands from each other can affect happiness in a relationship more than shared interests or personality traits. Published in the Journal of Consumer Research, “Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand Compatibility, Relationship Power, and Life Satisfaction” researchers used brand preferences in coffee, chocolate, beer, soda and cars to look at individuals and couples (some of whom were tracked over two years) and combined their findings on relationship power (who has more sway in the relationship) and happiness.

The result: Partners who had lower power in their relationships (those who don’t feel they can shape their partner’s behavior) tend to find themselves stuck with their partner’s preferred brands.

“This could lead to a death-by-a-thousand-cuts feeling,” said the study’s lead author Danielle Brick. “Most couples won’t break up over brand incompatibility, but it leads to the low-power partner becoming less and less happy.”

Highland, Ind., resident Zell Triezenberg remembers her “less than happy” feelings during her first marriage.

“I liked Raisin Bran, and he had to have Cap’n Crunch,” she said. “He couldn’t stand anything that didn’t have a ton of sugar in it, but the main (issue) was (that) he liked Kraft macaroni and cheese, and I like Velveeta mac and cheese. He couldn’t stand the Velveeta because he said it was too cheesy, but I didn’t think the powdered (Kraft) was cheesy enough.”

Triezenberg said it took her about five years before the tug of war on brands began to get on her nerves.

Christina Kulinski of Griffith, Ind., recalls a time when she and her husband, Ron, were in relationships with different partners who had different tastes.

“In my past relationship, I bought Miracle Whip to please my partner,” she said. “I resented the fact that he wouldn’t even try a different brand.”

Kulinski, a mom and paraeducator, prefers Hellmann’s. “I associated Hellmann’s to my childhood,” she said. At some point in the relationship, she just started buying a small jar of it, just for her.

Thomas O’Guinn, marketing professor and Thomas J. Falk distinguished chair in business at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, thinks the study is on point. Having studied sons who got into longstanding grudges over not picking the same brand of car as dad or not liking the same “family” brand of beer, he attests that the results are not surprising at all.

“Brands are serious stuff in a consumer society — perhaps sad but certainly true,” O’Guinn said. “Taste is not trivial: It has been a marker of social class, education, worldview, politics and worth in general for centuries.”

O’Guinn and his colleagues consider the Coke-Pepsi dispute legendary. In interviewing couples, the sociological researcher said they found that the Coke-Pepsi question/conversation usually occurs in the first few weeks of dating.

“One (person) eventually relents and switches because it’s a big enough indicator of something that one — probably, as the study suggests, lower in power — gives up or just doesn’t care enough about it to make it a deal breaker,” O’Guinn said.

Other brands that can cause serious family discord: Mac vs. Windows and Saab vs. Volvo, he said.

Patti Krueger LeTourneau and her husband, Grant, have been married for 11 years. When the Palatine couple were first married, they didn’t see eye-to-eye on toilet paper or on grocery stores — Dominick’s was his store of choice when it was around, and she liked Jewel.

“I did not like Dominick’s baked goods, produce or meat. This was an issue for us, especially if I would ask Grant to pick something up at the store. He would go to Dominick’s, and I was not satisfied with the items he would bring home. If need be, I would sometimes go back out to get the specific product I wanted,” she said.

“Early on, we would try to work it out by trying to convince one another why our specific product was better and whoever could provide a better argument/examples would get the brand power. Today, we split the buying duties equally, and both of us have learned that if there is a particular product that the other does not like, we will purchase both brands to make us both happy.”

Today, the LeTourneaus prefer Mariano’s. “It’s a win-win,” she said.

“We often think that it’s only the ‘big’ things that matter,” said Christine Whelan, director of the Money, Relationships and Equality initiative and clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s Department of Consumer Science. “This study highlights that our consumer behavior is a daily affirmation of our personal preferences, and we’d do well to take those ‘little’ things seriously. Any time we focus the lens of research on a topic that at first blush seems unimportant, we have an opportunity to learn a lot about how little habits make a big difference on well-being.”

drockett@chicagotribune.com