Today companies intrinsically seek to induce emotional responses in customers, whether it be through incidental (ie, experience such as a store ambiance) and intrinsic (ie, the core such as the name of the brand) means.  Emotions are the driving force behind consumer's actions. From searching out products, evaluation and choice to consumption and disposal, the emotions of consumers are both prevalent and powerful.

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The study of consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940s and 50s as a distinct field within the subject of marketing.  It seeks to explain the emotions, thought processes and general psychology involved in consumerism.

 

In the field of consumer emotions, which is the conscious feelings of their psychology, consumer's emotions can have a significant effect on their behaviour.  For instance, in a 2001 study, it was found the feeling-based evaluations of advertising material over reason-based evaluations produced quicker and more consistent judgements, and produced a greater variety of thoughts about the product or service.   

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Similarly, feeling-based assessments have been shown to override the magnitude effects on the evaluation of the consumer, for instance, how many items they are purchasing, the mindfulness of the consumer regarding making risky decisions and an assessment by the consumer of the long-term benefits of the item.  Emotions, therefore, can immediately affect consumer behaviour. 

 

There has, however been debate about whether the consequence for a consumer of purchasing particular items overrides the importance of their emotions, and whether studies advocating the importance of emotions have looked at only inconsequential decisions and that as the consequence of decisions increase, the impact of emotions diminishes.  Against that proposition, the importance of emotions in consumerism is nonetheless apparent, considering the greatest number of purchases are at prices of little consequence and, as the consequence of the decision increases, so do the emotions at play incrementally.

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When we talk of emotions, it can mean the arousal of feelings and their variety, cognitive appraisal and action readiness.  Emotions aroused can include happiness, pride, fear, sadness and disgust for example.  While each consumer can be in a particular mood prior to their experience, which can impact on the outcome, the effects of a shopping experience nonetheless are a significant force at play.  

 

Yet can we consider emotions solely as conscious thoughts or not?  States can arise from biological drives that come from our survival and reproductive instincts.  Hunger, thirst, body temperature, sexual arousal and pain are examples of these.  However, to distinguish instinctive drives from psychological drives, it is clear that these instinctive drives prompt a desire for a more limited consumption.  Someone hungry wants food and someone thirsty wants a drink.

 

Of course analysing why every consumer makes every single particular choice can be endless and impossible.  However, there are some collated and recognised principles behind consumer emotions. At least with instinctive emotions, consumer’s attentions are generally narrowed. 

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Nonetheless, it is undeniable that these instinctive emotions do not affect consumer behaviour to a certain degree.  For example, there is increasing amounts of research indicating that consumers feeling hungry are more likely to choose more unhealthy food.  Of course biology dictates it.  Humans crave saturated fat when particularly hungry.

 

Instinctive emotions can also affect consumer’s evaluation of products and can be triggered by both their own and external cues.  Instinctive emotions induce a consumer to go for what their body needs, but their evaluation of which individual product is still yet to be decided.

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The constituent building blocks of an analysis of consumer emotions are arousal and the variety of states of mind.  On the point of arousal, states of mind can flip between the positive and the negative state of mind.  For example, a 2001 study found that people reported feeling happy and sad while watching a comedy-drama.  This is the result of a number of thought processes between the interrelation and inter-stimulation of different emotions.  For instance, constant pleasure can soon become boring.  Scientifically, it is the continuous chain reaction of Neuron transmitters to receptors inside the brain.    

 

The varying degree of the consumer’s state of mind can be thought of as the degree to which they are consumed by the consumption process.  For example, a terrified person watching a horror movie intended to scare can usually be reasoned with to break them away from their fear.

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One of the principle emotions that can be conjured up by a consumer is valence, that is how good or bad they are emotionally feeling.  The main impact of this valence is relatively straightforward.  The object of their evaluation is generally evaluated more positively when they feel good and vice versa.

 

When a consumer is engaged in a shopping experience, the principal trigger for their emotions is called “arousal”.  When an emotion is conjured up, people spontaneously assess that emotion, which starts their decisions over whether to choose it or not.  

 

Arousal has been demonstrated to affect attention, memory, persuasion and evaluative judgements.  Arousing particular stressors, further, has been shown to potentially reduce cognitive capacity and narrow attention to salient or goal-relevant cues.  In a shopping experience, therefore, arousing the stressors of a consumer can influence their consumption choices.

 

It can, however, be deployed in a beneficial way to the consumer.  For important information, integral arousal can enhance memory.  Similarly, as the result of selective attention, arousal has also been shown to affect message persuasion.  There is also a growing consensus that arousal systematically affects evaluations, principally by making positive and negative evaluations more extreme.  

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It is down to the marketers to decide the optimal level of arousal for a given emotional experience.  While customers often spontaneously label the arousing experience they are having, which, by nature, therefore transfers it a full-blown emotional experience, individual arousal triggers by an enterprise can lead to an important impact on a consumer’s decision making.

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When a customer enters a store, goes online or engages in any form of consumerist activity, they do undeniably have a natural inclination or motive prior to their engagement.  The most important dimensions of this natural inclination are certainty, monetary potential and orientation.  For instance, fear and anxiety are associated with low certainty, a customer’s choices depends on how much they think they can afford and orientation is a natural predisposition towards arousal and evaluation. 

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In order to assess the source of emotions, one must first assess the extent to which the source of emotion active is inherent to the evaluation target.  For instance, store ambiance is only incidental concerning a customer’s evaluation of an item, whereas a specific chocolate bar on a rack is intrinsic.  Within the two extremes are task related factors, such as the challenges affecting the decision-making process, which would include the pros and cons of the different options, detachment after increased deliberation perhaps and time pressure.

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These integral, task-related and integral emotions at play in a consumer’s behaviour have been shown to affect multiple psychological processes within them.  Importantly, research has found that individuals most often prioritise emotion-inducing cues over non-emotion-inducing ones.  Research has also demonstrated that emotion-inducing cues are better at drawing and holding people’s attentions.

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Emotions affect attention through a two-stage process.  First, an individual makes a pre-attentive evaluation of the stimulus’ emotional significance, followed a second stage where an individual makes an attentively aware selective decision.  For instance, an individual observes a stimulus thereby making an immediate evaluation of the emotional significance attached, followed by a second where they consciously assesses its significance.

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Incidental factors have been found to have a more nuanced effect on consumer’s attentions.  Some research has suggested that emotional states influenced by incidental factors simply confer positive or negative value to the dominant perceptual orientation of the individual, however studies have also found that happier individuals have a broader attention focus than sadder individuals.  A more uplifting store then, would generally broaden the attention of the customers. 

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Intrinsically, a 2012 study assessed the impact of emotions on attention span towards internet advertising videos.  Alternating between joy and surprise, the study found surprise could increase concentrated attention more commonly than joy, whereas joy could better increase the retention of attention than surprise.  A 2010 study found, similarly, that highly emotionally emphatic cues on internet advertisements could better divert the attention of the viewer onto the advertisement. 

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Emotions, therefore, that an enterprise can inflict upon a consumer, both at an incidental and integral level, can importantly affect the pre-attentive and attentive attention of an individual, and while the bulk of marketing is presented visually, all five senses can act as attention grappling cues.  Marketers, today, also have to assess the frequency of cues, and assess the interplay of emotion, attention and habituation to best sell their products.

 

Aside from attention, emotions can also affect the memory of consumers.  In general, individuals recall emotional events better than non-emotional events.  This is principally enacted through arousal.  When valence is moderated, the memory of the event is nonetheless impacted by arousal.  When arousal disappears, however, the impact of valence on arousal dissipates.  Precisely, negative events are generally better remembered than positive ones. 

 

Recent evidence has suggested that perceptually salient or goal-relevant stimuli that arouse the consumer enhance their memory of the event the most.  Evidence supporting this theory has been found in the fact that the detrimental effect two competing cues weakens when the peripheral cues are more salient.  An individuals perception is thus concentrated solely on salient cues, rather than the limiting decision-making process, and their memory is consequently enhanced.  

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Furthermore, pre-induced emotions have been shown to improve the retention and recall of emotional and non-emotional cues.  Someone who particularly felt a certain emotion inside a store can thus better recall the stimuli present for example.  Research has argued that this effect is asymmetric.  It only works for positive events and not negative.  There is co-running stance that argues that individuals generally retrieve events in the same mood and the debate between the two was sparked in the 1990s.

 

What of the effect of emotions on consumers’ processing style?  Well, generally as result of signaling a more threatening situation, negative feelings induce a more careful and bottom-up processing of the environment.  Alternatively, positive emotions lead to a less diligent approach, and a less detailed and more top-down processing style.

 

We can transfer this difference to a variety of other thought processes in consumerism.  Top-down processing by more positive individuals leads to broader and more flexible acceptance compared to what they can differentiate between, which can consequently influence consumers’ brand extension evaluations.  The more positive they’re feeling, the more they might welcome a particular brand's wider coverage.  Research has also shown that positive feelings lead consumers to focus on and/or prefer more abstract and future goals, whereas negative feelings alternatively induce consumers to focus on and/or prefer more concrete and short-term goals.  

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What this means, therefore, is that positive emotions can induce a less diligent and more frivolous purchasing behaviour, greater allegiance to a brand and a prioritisation of abstract and future goals, compared with negative emotions which prompt a more restraint, careful and short-term focused approach. 

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When a consumer is purchasing an item, they commonly make estimates about that item.  These include principally their estimation of a particular moment to come and how they will feel at that time.  However, their estimations of the future do depend on how good or bad they are feeling at the time.  Research has shown it.  A seminal study in the early 1980s found that people’s predictions of the future were congruent with how good or bad they were feeling.  Later studies have further directed a more nuanced understanding.  High-uncertainty emotions such as fear have been shown to increase risk perception more than low-uncertainty emotions such as anger. 

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Naturally, when a consumer is inside a store, say a local supermarket for example, they take into account how much quantity they need.  However, this depends on their evaluation of how good the consumption will be.  It also has to consider their own predisposition regarding their wants and needs.  There is a such a thing as the duration bias.  Adpatation results in the pleasure of the experience dwindling over time, however often consumers over forecast the pleasantness of the experience beforehand.

 

Secondly, people often overestimate the intensity of a given emotional event to come.  This works in the effect that people anticipate feeling better than they actually feel immediately after the event and the same for negative feelings.  

 

However, this notion of an intensity bias has been disputed by more recent studies.  A 2012 study argued that the effect may, in fact, represent a methodological artefact, whereby is depends on the individuals method of consumption, rather than being a conclusive systematic bias.  The study argued that when people make estimations about how they will feel in the future, it becomes their focal event and is, as such, dependent, on their emotions at the time.  If this is corrected the intensity bias disappears. 

 

However, the notion of adaptation is hard to overcome.  Say when an individual is feeling particularly optimistic about a certain event, that incorporates focalising on a future event to come, however, with others the focal event is non apparent, yet adaptation brings about a decline in the intensity of the experience.  Alternatively, a 1996 study argued that individuals are prone to underestimate the intensity of an experience, however, ultimately it depends on an individuals own awareness and positivity.

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Adaptation works primarily for food products rather than something someone can get emotionally attached to, like a motor vehicle.  Something that can affect non-food products more is the type bias.  This is where people experience qualitatively experience different emotions in the future compared to what they expected to feel.  

 

This is the result of the salience of certain emotions at the time of purchasing, along with inaccurate lay theories that together induce an individual to disregard certain emotions they might experience in the future.  This was found in 2010 study that assessed emotions involved in gambling.  It found that people who decided not to gamble underestimated how bad they would feel when they found out they would have won.  Effectively, they under-appreciated the extremity of the regret they would feel. 

 

Duration bias, intensity bias and type bias are nonetheless prevalent phenomena in consumerism, with the duration bias apparent still to a certain degree with larger non-food items, where the immediate pleasure after the purchasing act wears away.  A emotional state cannot generally be stored and retrieved, but rather only felt in its immediacy, and any prediction of the future ultimately relies upon memory of the past.  

 

A number of factors have, however, been collated regarding what fuels people’s estimations of the future.  These are salient previous episodic memories, attentional focus, beliefs about how emotions should and/or do work, current feelings, people’s awareness of their own hidden motives and personality traits.

 

What can generally happen is that people’s predictions and memories of past pleasant experiences become more similar.  They become more positive than the emotions felt at the time of the shopping experience.  This is called the rosy view effect.     

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Aside from consumers’ estimations, emotions are known to affect consumers’ preferences specifically.  Integral and incidental emotions can influence consumers’ attitudes, intentions, willingness to pay, and both hypothetical and actual choices.  Not surprisingly, both incidental and integral influences on a consumers’ emotions can alter their attitudes and preferences within a given store.  

 

Research in depth began in the 1980s and 1990s regarding the role of emotions in the reception of advertisements.  Principally, the research found that positive emotions tended to induce a more positive attitude towards an advertisement and vice versa.  Regarding reception of the brand being advertised, positive emotions were demonstrated to induce a weaker and more indirect effect, but nonetheless influenced a more positive attitude towards the brand and vice versa.

 

Integral factors may play a role in affecting consumer’s preferences, principally in a mood congruent fashion, where positive integral factors, like a smile from a fundraiser, result in more positive emotions regarding the particular option, although mood-incongruent effects have also been shown in some instances to be apparent as well.  

 

Incidentally, a 1963 study demonstrated that consumers evaluated products more negatively after watching sad documentary compared with before.  Subsequently, the same congruent effects have been found in a variety different attitudinal and behavioural outlooks in variety of other consumer-related contexts.  However, some instances remain of mood-incongruent effects.  

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What this means is both incidental and integral factors, say the incidental weather and an integral smile of a street fundraiser, can affect consumer’s preferences.  On top of this, consumer’s preferences can also be affected by emotions triggered in the task itself.  A 1998 study demonstrated that when a consumer was engrossed in decision making process, facing mental difficulties from the inherent trade-offs among options, their preferences were slanted towards options that reduced the negative feelings attached to the trade-off problem, such as, for example, sticking with the status quo.  

 

What of the impact of emotions on preferences in the long term?  Well, emotions can directly and indirectly affect consumers’ preferences in the long term through behavioural consistency and/or memory-based evaluations.

 

Emotions affect consumers’ preferences through various psycological processes.  We’ve established that positive and negative emotions lead to better or worse assessments of an item.  How, however, does this work precisely?  Taking a behaviourist approach firstly to the phenomenon, it is apparent, albeit superficial at first glance, that congruent judgements are the result of an automatic process, where the affect of the source affecting the consumer is directly transferred on to the evaluation target.  This perspective on congruent judgements argues that no inferential processes or alterations in beliefs are necessary for emotions to congruently affect evaluations. Evidence to support this stance has been found in the effects of pleasant and unpleasant background features on consumer preference.  

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Alternatively, others have argued that congruent evaluations are the result of highly cognitive and memory-based processes.  For instance, positive emotions impact on memory and cognitive functioning, which leads to a more positive evaluation. Positive emotions also call to mind similarly positive material, which influences their preferences.  

 

A third position, in the middle of these two extremes, argues that people spontaneously ask themselves how they feel about an item, when they judge a specific target.  This then results in their current affective states being attributed to the target, and, thus, their emotions form congruent evaluations.  Evidence for this argument has been found in the fact that emotions play a weaker role if the information affecting the individual is less relevant.  There is less substance to be evaluated and thus less when the emotions of the individual and the information combine, resulting in a smaller impact of emotions.

 

In other instances, however, emotions have an incongruent effect on the target behaviour of a consumer.  For instance, negative feelings can encourage particular individual to purchase something in a store.  The processes whereby this phenomenon occurs is where an individual or group strive to weaken the negative emotions they are feeling and/or maintain positive ones.  This results, for example, in individuals trying to help more and give more, for instance, by giving more charitable donations.  Similarly, people feeling good can try less to exert themselves in order to preserve their good feelings.  It is a case of someone trying to reach or maintain pleasant feelings, and acting accordingly as a consumer.

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Combing the two phenomena, we can say congruent consumerism works through affective evaluation, whereas incongruent consumerism operates through affective regulation.  The interaction between these two mechanisms determines how emotions influence consumer behaviour.  Things that can change the dynamic between affective evaluation and affective regulation include, for example, an individual's beliefs about how their consumer behaviour will affect their mood in the future.  Can, say, an item of food that will perk them up in the future encourage them to purchase it more than the negative feelings they are feeling in the take-away restaurant.  

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Emotions, then, affect consumer behaviour in a variety of ways.  Today, shopping experiences are still rich with interpersonal communication, and, since emotions serve a social function, rich with emotions as well.  Store ambiance among others, and, of course, the integral product or service carry with them a whole range of emotions they can inspire in the beholder.  Join us, then, at Blawa.com in thinking of the emotions being aroused, manipulated and processed within us during the next time we're involved in any form of consumer activity.