Keep up with Patels, not Joneses

LONDON: You no longer have to keep up with the Joneses. It’s the Patels who are leading a hi-tech lifestyle worth aspiring after.

A survey looking at the buying behaviour of UK’s most common surnames has found that the Patels spend more per head on expensive gadgets than other surnames. On an average, the community spends more than £2,300 a year per head on electronic items like home entertainment, computers and digital cameras.

“Keeping up with the Joneses is a well-known phrase. However, when you actually look at what people are buying, it’s clear that the Patels beat the Joneses hands down,” said Ulric Jerome, MD of Pixmania.com, an online retailer which commissioned the research.

The phrase Keeping up with the Joneses is believed to have originated in the 1850s when Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones built a turreted villa in Rhinecliff, New York, prompting her neighbours to add turrets and wings to their homes. It also acquired cachet because Jones was one of the most common surnames in the UK.

Even now Jones is the second most common surname in the UK with about 400,000 people bearing it. Patel (at 80,000 in 1998) is Britain’s 40th most common surname.

But its purchasing power is far above its rank among popular surnames.

“The Patels will settle only for an iPod. Other groups are more likely to opt for a cheaper mp3 player,” said Jerome.

“The Patels will often buy a Nintendo Wii and a PlayStation 3 but others are more likely to fork out for just one of them,” he said.