The Last Name Effect

Time Magazine wrote an article about weird economics and consumer behavior academic studies. The study that I found most interesting was the study on the "last name effect."
http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2045050,00.html

The last name effect says that people with surnames that start later in the alphabet are faster to make a purchase. They found that people with a last name r-z were  more respondent to call to action. This means that those commercials that urge you to come since the furniture store is closing for the 12th time, will really attract Mr. Young or Ms. Zimmer.

 

This was the conclusion made by Kurt Carlson an assistant professor at Georgetown and assistant professor Jacqueline Conrad from Belmont University after conducting four different experiments.

 

With such creditable sources talking about this study like Time Magazine and the Huffington Post, it is hard not to believe this study. 

With that said I have many questions. After taking statistics and marketing research, I know think about these things before believing a study.

Was this study representative of the United States or just the area they studied?

Since it was done at a university, was it only representative of some college or college educated people?

Were the sample sizes big enough to make these generalizations?

Is four experiments enough to make such a generalization?


They contribute this phenomenon to people with those later last names always being chosen last in grade school or being ordered last in a line. Which I think is pretty old school, I know that all of my teachers would try to change it up so no one was ever last all of the time.

Its definitely interesting what association happen often and people assume that something crazy can cause something else.