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Reuters today reported on yet another research study that validates what we all intuit: The happier you are, the healthier you’re likely to be.

This British study of about 3,000 adults ages 50 to 75 found those who were happier produced lower amounts of cortisol, a hormone that can contribute to obesity, increased blood pressure and an impaired immune function. One might think that happier people are just more apt to live healthier lifestyles, but that theory hasn’t held up to research. So now scientists are trying to find a tight biological link between happiness and health.

The leader of the study, Dr. Andrew Steptoe, said, “We need to help people recognize the things that make them feel good and truly satisfied with their lives, so that they spend more time doing those things.” No duh, right? But now I have a top-notch scientist and a published study to quote when I do what makes me happy: buy books, clothes and other stuff I trade up for. Thank you, Dr. Steptoe! I do feel better. And happier.

For my fellow book lovers out there, I have to tell you: the new digital book reader from amazon.com, called “The Kindle,” is a real treat. After just one week, I’m hooked! I highly recommend it to anyone who finds happiness in the written word.

Now, before going any further, I will tell you that the device isn’t a design wonder like, say, the iPhone, nor is its usability quotient really up there like, say, the iPhone’s. But despite those two drawbacks, it’s still sure to make any book (or magazine or newspaper or blog) reader very happy indeed. Here’s why:

You can visit the Kindle store on amazon.com and with one click order a book. Within minutes, it’s beamed wirelessly to your Kindle. You don’t need to download content and transfer to your Kindle. It just magically appears! And herein lies the crucial difference between the Kindle and other digital book readers that have been offered (and that haven’t taken off).

The books cost about half, or even less, than the kind made with paper. You can select from a handful of major newspapers, like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, to be delivered to your Kindle early every morning. The same basic approach works for magazines and some blogs, too.

Now if you’re a reader who likes pretty pictures, the Kindle isn’t for you. The images are grainy and in black and white, and most of the content comes devoid of the supporting imagery you would find in actual printed edition. But for a lot of us content junkies, that’s OK; it’s the words that matter most and if something really jumps out at us, we can go online for the color images.

Just think about it: With a Kindle, you can wake up every morning and put right in your hands your favorite newspapers, blogs and books ready to be savored along with your coffee and pastry.

We Americans are a happy lot. Just ponder some of these recently published stats (and noted in The New York Times today in David Brooks’ column). Some 86% of Americans are content with their current job (General Social Survey). On top of that, 76% say they are satisfied with their household income (Pew Research Center). And the future makes us happy, as a some 62% of these happy folks say they expect their future to be even happier in the coming five years (Harris Poll).

On the flip side, Americans are downright unhappy (disgusted is a more appropriate word) with our government. An alarming 80% of Americans believe that the current Congress has accomplished nothing. Zilch! The big goose egg! We generally think that whenever the government gets involved it means nothing but incompetence and inefficiency. Here’s how bad things have gotten: We are more displeased and unimpressed with government than we were in 1974 when the Vietnam War was wrapping up and Watergate was all the buzz.

No matter how happy we may be with our private lives, our happiness is not as full as it could be if our government lacks our trust and respect. Let this be a reminder to us all, but especially to our young people: pay attention to who is running for office at the local, state and national levels; get registered; and vote for the candidate you believe will restore faith, efficiency and progress to government. Our happiness depends upon it.

The current issue of Newsweek (October 22, 2007) has a story about how the anemic housing market, the rise in fuel costs and general economic anxiety have led people to choose to scaling down rather than trading up.

The piece, entitled “The Latte Era Grinds Down,” makes this point: “For the past several years, American consumers at every rung of the income ladder have been trading up—splurging on a growing array of luxury products, from $4 lattes to $4,000 handbags. With easy access to credit, especially home-equity loans, middle-class Americans began regularly trading up for items that appealed to them, buying food staples at Kroger but splurging on Kobe beef at Whole Foods. Suddenly, everybody was a luxury consumer—for certain items.

“But as the saying goes, what goes up must come down. Now many of those same Americans who traded up are shunning luxuries and returning to basics. The upshot: many of the companies that expanded in the hopes of reaching a mass audience of luxury consumers are suffering.”

Our cars, houses and even are coffee mugs are being down-sized. (Cheap coffee at McDonald’s is enjoying a sales boom.) In a recent survey, 70-percent said they were not spending as much on certain accessories such as watches and bags.

But don’t despair! The article also notes that trading up expert and author Michael Silverstein “points to powerful, long-term trends that suggest customers will continue to reach for luxury. Real income is still growing, and ‘trading up has been driven over the long term by women going to work and earning wages that are closer to parity with men.’”

That said, the situation makes for an even stronger argument that, now more than ever, trade up brands must market with real insight and conviction, not to mention providing what we at Barefoot have coined “Reasons to Rationalize.” This downturn, if indeed that’s what it is, can actually help some smart luxury brands build business by seizing consumers’ attention (and pocketbooks) while competitors are inclined to adopt a wait-and-see attitude.

There is a lovely piece (as almost always) in the “Lives” section of today’s New York Time’s Sunday Magazine. Called “Money Always Talks,” the essay is about a woman and her daughter as, together, they walk around Southampton and take in the mesmerizing sites of great wealth to be found there.

The most striking part of this piece written by Daphne Merkin was her commentary on how many of us feel about the wealthy–and the money at their command. I thought it relevant to the notion of trading up, particularly in the luxury marketing segment. More specifically, I think it sheds light on the guilt and uncertainty many of us feel whenever we spend more than we have to for something, be that a guitar, a home or a private jet. Here’s an excerpt:

So, as it turns out, Ernest Hemingway was wrong, and F. Scott Fitzgerald was right: The rich are different, not only because they have more money but also because they elicit such an oxymoronic barrage of responses. They’re worse, and they’re better, reviled and adulated. They stir up envy, and they invite respect. Most of all, they make us think we would do better if we had their dough (exercise more discerning taste, give more generously to worthy causes, assume a more modest air). Or, at least, we want the option to prove our lofty conjectures. As Kingsley Amis wrote before he got lucky: “I want to prove that money isn’t everything.”

Is it or isn’t it? In the history of love-hate relationships, our paradoxical romance with money ranks among the oldest and the most enduring. And there is no end in sight.

Good stuff. Though I remain convinced that should I become one of the super-wealthy, I will buck the trend and do far greater good with that cash than most anyone. Well, I’d be in the top 30% anyway. Well, at the least the top 70%-80% On a good day, anyhow.

Somewhat to my surprise, it occurred to me just the other day that I have become someone who trades up for fashion. It used to be that my wardrobe was nothing but jeans and T-shirts from the likes of The Gap, Target and Old Navy. But now I’m paying two- to five-times what I used to shopping at the likes of Buckle, Fossil and Guess.

What gives?

I think the answer can be found in the fact that I started trading up for clothes about a year ago, but subconsciously chose to sort of ignore it, meaning I was hiding something from myself. (Of course, after you spend so much, there’s no ignoring the AmEx bills.) Why have I been paying more for arguably more “hipper,” more “fashionable” clothes? I think the honest truth comes down to a mild mid-life crisis. Why else would a married 36-year-old worry that much about what he wore? Or spend considerably more than he had to meet basic clothing needs?

My new wardrobe makes me feel younger and more with it, even though I realize that I run the risk of looking like a 36-year-old who dresses like a 14-year-old. But, assuming that I’m not falling into that trap, I feel younger, which makes me feel better. Vain? Probably. But who cares? Isn’t psychic gratification a big part of trading up? Of course it is!

It’s not easy admitting to vanity, to coming out of the fashion store closet, so to speak. But as a student of the buying mind, I find the lengths we will go to rationalize our purchases (or even hide them for a while) quite fascinating. Once again, I’m reminded of how those who market trade up products can help themselves by providing their prospects and consumers with what Barefoot has trademarked as the “Reasons to Rationalize.”

My clothes may cost more than they used to, but I rationalize the added expense by convincing myself that I look younger (and better), that the clothes are at least marginally better made and that, as an advertising creative, I need to look “with it.” Silly? Maybe. But so is the fact that I’m actually older than 36. How much so? That’s for me to know and you to guess.

One of the best things about trading up is trading up for others. My wife is a pro football fan and so this year I bought her season tickets to the Cincinnati Bengals. (They open their season on Monday Night Football.) I’ll accompany her to a game or two, I’m sure, but this really isn’t a case of the husband buying a sports-related gift for himself and trying to pass it off, no pun intneded, as a gift for his wife. I don’t follow the sport and or care much about it. In fact, the thought of sitting in Paul Brown Stadium while it’s 20-degrees (or colder) for four hours sounds like torture. I’d much rather watch it on TV. But the tickets sure made my wife happy, which, in turn, makes me happy. So maybe, in a way, I did buy those tickets for myself.

My two daughters (ages 10 and 12) are horse crazy. They’ve been taking lessons for more than a year, read all the horse fan magazines, draw countless pictures of horses, and otherwise eat, sleep and breath horses (that’s when they’re not absorbed in a Disney channel sitcom such as “Hannah Montana”). So I’ve been investigating buying and boarding a horse for them. A horse is a big step up from the gerbils and chincillas that they’ve had. But I think they’re ready for it. And I know it will please them to no end. I also know that they will be handing over allowance and birthday money and forgoing some Christmas gifts to help keep their new pet well fed, shoed and cared for. It’s a mighty fine life-lesson: trading up costs money, and it also means that you have to make sacrafices and cut corners elsewhere. And, in my book, that’s a lesson worth paying for.

I won’t change my tune.

I still love my iPhone.

But I think with a premature $200 reduction in the price of the iPhone, Apple has alienated their most loyal consumers, and demonstrated a complete lack of understanding as to why people were willing to trade-up in the first place.

When people stretch and spend more than “they should have” for a luxury item, they find Reasons to Rationalize® their purchase. As for my $600 iPhone, my Reasons to Rationalize included the ability to finally have one stand alone device that allowed me to leave my macbook behind, the iPod functionality, the visual voicemail, etc.  That was how I was able to rationalize spending $600 on a phone.

As of today, I can no longer do that. Now I can rationalize $400 of the purchase to get those features, but Apple has put me in an indefensible position (in my mind) of having spent an extra $200 due to what can only be seen as a completely irrational (or childlike) desire to be first. Essentially I now have paid $400 for a phone, and $200 to have it a few weeks before everyone else. That does not remotely feel good or engender any positive feelings toward the Apple brand.

Another of the key tenets of how you market a trading-up product is how you treat consumers after purchase. After purchase, a purchaser constantly searches for post-purchase cues that they’ve made a smart decision. Up until today, the media/blogosphere was filled with positive reviews all working to reinforce that an iPhone purchase was wise. And then Apple makes a move that completely undoes all of that positive post-purchase feedback in one fell swoop. Now the blogosphere is full of people enraged with their premature purchase.

Net, instead of looking and feeling smart about my iPhone purchase, I feel sheepish for rushing out and not delaying gratification for a few more weeks.

To be clear, I assumed we would see the price drop as the holidays drew near to drive additional iPhone sales, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine they would cut prices by $200 (with no reduction in features) in 2 months.

The lack of regard for their best customers is really impossible to fathom.

The odds of me ever buying anything in the first 6 months of an Apple new release?  Zero.

Way to go Steve Jobs. You’ve just proved you’re not the “in-touch-with-the-consumer” genius people thought. Apparently you forgot how much your success has depended on riding the backs of millions of misguided Apple evangelists.

There will be one less back to ride in the future.

There’s a great article by Sarah Mahoney on Mediapost’s Marketing Daily that highlights the spending power controlled by low-income households. The article is in response to the findings of a recent study published by IRI that showed:

These consumers–about 40% of the U.S. population–actually outspend more affluent types, and will shell out $85.3 billion on consumer packaged goods in 2007. In the next decade, IRI estimates this group will generate an additional $84 billion in incremental spending on packaged goods.

The article highlights that with the recent boom in luxury spending, marketers have been ignoring lower income consumers and that there is a clear risk in doing so.

Mahoney quotes Sean Seitzinger of IRI who points out that not all retailers have ignored this segment and he highlighted Target’s efforts as being spot on:

Certain of the dollar-store formats, he (Seitzinger) says, have gotten the formula right. And Target has also nailed it, managing to straddle a market position that not only welcomes middle-class shoppers willing to trade down for occasional bargains, but also entices lower-income shoppers to trade up. “These lower-income people go to Target to buy their nicest outfits,” he says.

But it’s also got an “understanding that the dialog with lower-income shoppers isn’t just about price,” he adds. Target’s Choxie chocolates, for example, cost far less than Godiva, but are a lot more interesting than a bag of M&Ms: “It’s offering lower-income shoppers a high-end indulgence in a form they can afford but still makes them feel luxurious.”

This is spot on with what we’ve learned and are applying at Barefoot. Trading-up is not limited to the affluent, and rocketing is a behavior that applies to everyone regardless of income level.

A new book called Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster by fashion writer Dana Thomas seems quite interesting as a piece of historical and social commentary, but more than a bit shallow and naive in terms of economics and human behavior.

Thomas seems to bemoan the fact that once great luxury brands that stood apart because of craftsmanship are now commanding luxury prices largely on the basis of status, since overall product quality in the fashion space has declined substantially in her view.Thomas seems to long for the good old days when only the rich could afford certain things, making it clear who was in the upper caste. And who wasn’t. Of course, it’s still very true that only the rich can afford certain things, but our robust economy has created a middle class with a lot of spending power, or more to the point: with the means to cut corners in one area in order to trade up in another. (Just as Thomas herself finds a couple loading shopping bags from an outlet store into a $380,000 car.)

Thomas seems to ignore the tremendous psychic gratification one can gain by aligning him- or herself with a particular brand–”badging” as some call it. How does one put a value on that? It’s simple: It’s whatever someone is willing to pay for it, regardless of how ridiculous you or I may think that is. (I have a $600 luxury fishing pole; I know at least one person who thinks that’s crazy.) Thomas suggests that some companies are making obscene profits while their products leave lots to be desired in terms of quality. In her view, this is something of a crime. I’m no advocate for shoddy products at high prices, of course. But I am a fan of the free market. Unacceptable quality will eventually catch up with any brand, I believe, but even faster with those who play in the luxury space. Poor quality is an open door for competitors to stroll right in. (As a quick aside for those in the Eastern United States, think about what Ron Trzcinski of The Original Mattress Factory has done to shed light on the poor craftsmanship and high costs of the bedding industry.)

All that said, if someone wants to pay, say, $1,000 for a “designer” garbage bag that a woman wears as a dress as a means of making a statement about herself and her place in the world, then I say that’s a win-win situation for both the dressmaker and the dress wearer.