Could the environment affect consumer purchasing habits?

In a study done by Jonah Berger and Grainne Fitzsimons, a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, published a study on how consumers choices are affected by the subtle enviornmental factors they see every day. If companies can find a way to relate their products to things that are already in the environment, they can get an automatic boost.

One of the studies conducted showed that people who saw dogs on a daily basis were more likely to buy Puma shoes. This is a result of dogs relating to cats, and then consumers transferring this thought to seeing cougars on the shoes. Another study asked consumers to list types of candy both before the day of Halloween and then a week after. The day before Halloween, out of the 144 consumers questioned, they were half as likely to say candies that were colored orange. Read more about the survey here.

Have you seen results show up like this when it comes to selling your products? Are you more likely to sell more of something in the fall than the spring? Why?