Remember the McDonald’s slogan “You deserve a break today”? The ad did well for McDonald’s, or so it seemed, as it continued to come back decade after decade for the golden arches.

The ad ran from 1971-1975, then again 1980-1983 and finally from 1989-1990. Perhaps McDonald’s honed in on a segment of consumers who felt neglected, sad and underappreciated. Calling out to them, “Hey, we know how you feel, now come on in and buy a burger.” And in they would go.

“Comfort Shopping” is much like “Comfort Food,” only the shopper trades a burger and fries for something a little more substantial. It plays on the emotion, and draws in the customer by making them feel better for purchasing an item of value. Not just any value though, something of high quality, and often met with a higher price.

A 2008 study conducted by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jennifer Lerner supports this idea. She and her team took a deep dive into how emotions play in our decision-making process. Her paper, “Misery is not miserly: Sad and self-focused individuals spend more,” tests a hypothesis that, “When people are sad, they pay more to buy things.”

She writes, “An interesting aspect of this phenomenon is that, in our experiment at least, sadness has an effect even when it has nothing to do with the decision at hand. We showed a sadness-inducing video and then asked decision makers in our studies to remember sad events from their personal past. Whether they felt sad about losing something they loved, losing a pet, or reminiscing about a past mentor, sadness carried over and affected the prices they were willing to pay for utilitarian objects such as a water bottle or a highlighter set.

“In fact, most decision makers in our studies insisted that the sad feelings we triggered did not in any way influence the prices they set to buy something. Thus, participants assigned to the sad condition end up paying more than participants assigned to the neutral condition, and the sad participants do not recognize that their feelings drive up the price they pay.”

So why does all of this matter? Sad people want nice stuff, it makes them feel better. At least temporarily. Lerner found in her study that the “sad” group was willing to pay as much as 300 percent more for common items such as bottled water and highlighters.  With this in mind, marketing to geographies that have a higher propensity of sad people becomes a strategic mind game.

Our team of analysts at MarketStar conducted our own study, in an effort to find the saddest cities in America. We looked at large cities with a population of at least 500,000, and with our geo-targeting expertise we analyzed metros that had the highest consumption of anti-depressants, the highest divorce rates and the highest unemployment rates.

Top to bottom here is how they rank:

10. Las Vegas, NV
9.  Jacksonville, FL
8.  Akron, OH
7. Toledo, OH
6. Greensboro, NC
5. Dayton, OH
4. Chattanooga, TN
3. Youngstown, OH
2. Louisville, KY
1. Detroit, MI

And here is a little news to be happy about; consumer spending is up for 2011. The government reported in January that consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of all spending, rose at a 4.4 percent rate in the final quarter of 2010.

“We ended the quarter on a firmer note,” said Joseph LaVorgna, who is a managing director and serves as chief U.S. economist in charge of U.S. macroeconomic research for global markets. “We are going to see continued healthy spending in 2011. The inflation numbers are very tame.”

Happy or sad. That is good news for everyone.