The 2d paragraph of the quote below explains why I find this interesting but not surprising ~ personally, I love Trader Joe's ~ even with its limitations, its "pros" far outweigh its "cons" ~ it's not really a "full service" grocery because it has limited fresh produce/meat/fish ~ but it has excellent frozen and generic products and a great wine selection, all at very good prices ~ and TJ's mindset and policies in employee treatment and benefits are the polar opposite of Walmart's ~ Sooz

Thursday, Feb 7, 2013 01:43 PM CST
There’s a reason more liberals shop at Trader Joe’s
New research shows that Conservatives tend to prefer the brand-name products of Walmart.
By Tom Jacobs

This piece originally appeared on Pacific Standard.

The cliché that liberals shop at Trader Joe’s, while conservatives prefer Walmart, is no doubt overstated. But where would the perception come from?

Newly published research provides a compelling answer: brand-name products. Conservatives gravitate toward them, and Walmart, unlike Trader Joe’s, is packed with them.

That provocative conclusion can be drawn from a study in the journal Psychological Science. A research team led by Vishal Singh of New York University’s Stern School of Business has discovered a relationship between voting behavior, high levels of religiosity, and “seemingly inconsequential product choices.”

They argue that your decision to vote for a certain candidate, and purchase a particular brand of detergent, springs from the same basic impulse:


The researchers used a comprehensive database that tracks weekly store sales of thousands of products. Focusing on 416 counties which collectively represent 47 percent of the U.S. population, they calculated the market share of generics in 26 categories, including coffee, deodorant, and peanut butter.

Making similar county-to-county comparisons, they also calculated the market share of new products in the first year after their launch.

Using data from the Association of Religion Data Archives, the researchers determined the percentage of residents of each county who adhered to a particular faith. This was “strictly defined as the number of full members of a religious denomination, and the number of nonmembers who attend services regularly.”

Finally, to assess political affiliation, the researchers used the average percentage of Republican votes cast in the eight presidential elections between 1980 and 2008.

The results: In 19 of the 26 categories, greater religiosity was strongly associated with a lower market share for generic products. (The association was also found in another six categories, but at a level below statistical significance.) “We found essentially the same pattern in the associations between Republican voting and generics,” they write.

“Similarly,” they add, “the market share of new products was significantly lower in counties with higher levels of religiosity and Republican voting. Taken together, our results provide strong evidence that more conservative markets are associated with a higher reliance on established national brands and a lower penetration of new products.”

These findings are in line with recent research suggesting our ideological fault lines extend to surprising territory, including patterns of charitable giving. A study published last year provided evidence of literal differences between the brains of liberals and conservatives.

To follow up, Singh and his colleagues hope to explore differences in purchasing choices between individualistic, Western cultures and more collectivist, Eastern societies. While that will be interesting, they have already found a fascinating pattern within the U.S.

It seems ideological attitudes reveal themselves not only in the voting booth and the church pew, but also in the supermarket check-out lane.

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/07/ever_wondered_why_conservatives_dont_like_trader_joes_partner/

Well that's silly. Why wouldn't conservative people want food that's more natural and less processed and tastes better at better prices? The largest super Walmart around here has several natural choices, but the regular Walmarts with groceries rarely have the natural versions of the name brands. Skippy has a natural peanut butter and Welches has a grape jelly without HFCS but they don't carry those at Walmart here. And Walmart can't touch the juice or cheese selection that TJs carries!

Why wouldn't conservative people want food that's more natural and less processed and tastes better at better prices?

'Cuz that would mean a change in their boring lives.

I have never heard of Trader Joe's so there must not be one around our area.
I am not sure I agree with this article though. Seems rather silly, IMO.

that dogmatics would also be brand loyal makes perfect sense to me.

One factor they should take into account is where the markets are located. I have to go to suburban Philadelphia to find a Trader Joe's. They are not omnipresent. Dee never heard of them, and i have never been to one. I might go there to shop if there was one here, but I am not going 40 miles to shop there.

Walmarts have more locations. I can travel 10 miles and shop there, and I chose not to.

TJs is definitely a much smaller chain that Walmart. However it was only about 15 years ago when I lived closer to two TJs than to any Walmarts. Walmart was slow to move into the northeast.