This article in the NY Times doesn’t contain any stunning insight, but researchers have found more evidence that neighbors influence purchase, especially larger, riskier purchases, such as cars, especially when people have more to lose. This fact makes it harder for new brands or comebacks, but it does point to the importance of focusing marketing on geographic communities. Marketers need to move more marketing support to areas where neighborhood effect is welling up.

NY Times: The Neighbors as Marketing Powerhouses by David Leonhardt

Marketers have long understood that groups of friends and relatives tend to buy the same products, but understanding the reasons has been tricky. Is it because they are so similar in how much money they make and what television ads they watch that they independently arrive at the same decision? Or do they copy one another, perhaps out of envy or perhaps because they have shared information about the products? Three economists recently found a novel way to answer the question across the Atlantic, in Finland….

"The ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ effect doesn’t really seem to be driving this," said Mark Grinblatt of the University of California, Los Angeles, who did the research with Matti Keloharju and Seppo Ikäheimo, both of the Helsinki School of Economics.

There is little reason to think the same dynamic is not at work in this country. One survey shows that as people get closer to buying a car, they switch from paying attention to television and magazine ads to newspaper ads and the Internet, where the information is more specific. But the opinions of their friends and colleagues remain a crucial influence at every stage.