According to new research, when people are choosing a place for a big event, they want to feel unique
2 min
When planning a trip, or seeking a venue for a special celebration, prospective travellers often look at social-media photos of people enjoying possible destinations.
Such selfies can actually make the destinations seem less appealing, according to a recently published study . More specifically, if consumers are considering a place for a self-defining experience such as a wedding, proposal or special vacation, they won’t like it if they see other people pictured there.
The reason, researchers say, is that when a human is featured in a website picture or social-media post of a destination, it can give the viewer a sense that the person pictured has or is signalling ownership of the place.
“We want to stand out by being a little different,” says Zoe Y. Lu , an assistant professor of marketing at Tulane University and the lead author of the paper. “If my cousin saw a picture of my husband proposing to me at a particular national park, for example, my cousin would worry that choosing that same spot to propose to his loved one would be perceived as him being a boring person, lacking a sense of self.”
Across six studies, Lu and two colleagues looked at when and why human presence in online photos lowers viewers’ preference for what she calls “experience venues”—that is, destinations that serve not only as physical spaces but as symbolic arenas that provide a way for people to define themselves.
In one experiment, Lu and her team asked 416 online participants to look at images of two hiking trails, labeled A and B, and to imagine they were picking one for their New Year’s Day hike. Participants liked trail A better than trail B when no person was shown. If there was a hiker present in the photo of trail A but not trail B, viewers preferred trail A significantly less than when no human was shown. “Our theory is that the hiker in the image offers kind of a territorial signal,” says Lu. “It says to our self-identity, ‘Someone else has been here, don’t try their hike, try a hike that seems like nobody has done.’ ”
In another experiment, participants were asked to imagine the photos they were being shown were of two potential wedding locations for themselves. Fifty-three percent of participants chose location A if neither picture included another couple tying the knot. But if another couple was shown in a photo of location A, and not in location B, only 27% of the participants chose location A.
By contrast, in another experiment, participants were told to imagine they were planning a wedding for someone else. As planners, they didn’t mind whether or not a couple was shown in the photo. “Wedding planners aren’t seeking self-identity the way their clients are,” Lu says.
Lu says that her research may have some implications for online marketers. “They might encourage previous customers not to post selfies of special experiences if they want new customers to try those experiences at the same location, which seems counterintuitive, I know,” she says.
Hotels and destinations, too, might reconsider including images of clearly visible guests and visitors in their marketing materials. And social-media influencers might want to skip the selfie in paid posts for destinations, so as not to seem territorial. One exception, Lu notes, is when the person in the photo has an identity that is distinct from that of the viewer, such as the owner of the venue, “but you might want to acknowledge that the person shown is the owner,” she says.
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Apple’s growth engine is showing signs of slowing, as rising costs, weaker services growth and AI competition challenge its profitability. With John Ternus taking the helm, the pressure is on to reignite innovation and sustain investor confidence.
3 min
The Apple growth and profit machine is wavering, and the boost from price increases might not be enough to keep it going at historic rates. That dials up the pressure on Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus.
The company saved the bad news for its earnings call, an hour after it posted its results for the September quarter, projecting that for the current quarter its high-margin services business will continue to slow and that its widely watched gross profit margin will continue to fall.
Apple AAPL -1.83%decrease; down pointing triangle shares had been flat in post-close trading but declined as much as 4% after the company made the projections, which fell short of Wall Street estimates.
The impact of high memory costs are weighing even more heavily on the company, Ternus and Apple Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said on the company’s earnings call. Apple has stockpiled cheaper components purchased earlier, but those inventories are dwindling.
When Ternus took over as Apple’s third chief executive of the past 29 years on Sept. 1, he inherited sky-high expectations. The men he followed were among the most successful company leaders in American business history. Steve Jobs revolutionized consumer devices multiple times. Tim Cook expanded Jobs’s creation to spectacular heights.
The expectations are reflected in Apple’s huge valuation. Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang noted that Apple stock trades at 36 times next year’s expected earnings, a premium to the overall market, even though its earnings are only expected to grow 1%, which is slower than its tech peers.
“We see insufficient upside to justify the premium,” Yang wrote in an investor note, adding that Apple needs to boost iPhone sales growth and turn around its slowing services business to make him more bullish.
Investors have bid up Apple shares because it has been a port in the AI storm—a reliable and capital-efficient business that stands apart from rivals which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars racing to the AI frontier.
While others invest in data centers, Apple has been pouring its own cash into buybacks and dividends. But that safety may be challenged if Ternus can’t speed up Apple’s innovation engine.
Apple’s lagging performance in AI was evident when its new “Siri AI” chatbot arrived this past quarter. Its long-maligned assistant was already stale the day it arrived, surpassed by agents such as Instinct and Muse that can complete multistep tasks for consumers, while Siri still sets kitchen timers.
Apple needs to give people reasons to buy its devices as they get more expensive. The company raised prices across the board last quarter to help offset higher costs. Without compelling new features, a big question is whether consumers will slow the frequency of iPhone upgrades.
The new iPhone Duo appears to be a bright spot. Consumers are scooping up the $1,999 foldable smartphone despite mixed reviews—so many that Apple can’t keep up with demand. Shipping dates jumped out to January soon after the device went on sale, a disappointment for the normally reliable Apple supply chain.
Apple said its revenue grew 12% in the September quarter, slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Its widely tracked gross profit margin, at 47.9%, also came in just ahead of analyst estimates.
Apple will need to find new growth avenues because a reliable engine during the Cook era—the services business—is slowing. Courts and regulators worldwide have limited Apple’s ability to charge developers big fees to distribute apps through its App Store, the biggest component of the company’s services segment.
One of its most lucrative App Store fee generators has been the ChatGPT app from OpenAI. Around the time Apple accused OpenAI of trade-secret theft this past summer, OpenAI began redirecting potential subscribers to pay via its website instead of the App Store, skirting Apple’s tollbooth.
Apple’s valuation has bumped up against a ceiling in recent weeks. Six times it traded above a $5 trillion market capitalization intraday before finally closing above the threshold, which it has already fallen back below.
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