Influence of Emotions on Purchase Decisions

Moreover, emotions dwell at the heart of customers’ needs and wants, and so-called “rational” customer decisions are generally influenced, and are often driven, by emotional considerations. 

The following example can be given to illustrate this. A customer is inclined to buy a product because it better functionality while being given the price approximately the same as a competitor product. A reasonable choice would be to buy the product-better functionality, same price. However, the customer may feel uncomfortable with the brand. The customer may feel unappreciated by the retail store. Finally, the product’s color may call forth the negative emotions associated with the customer’s least favorite baseball team. What might at first seem like a simple rational choice now appears to be a more complex choice process in which the customer’s emotions play a pivotal role and may well lead to a purchase decision that the so-called “rational” choice criteria might not have projected.

Marketing Emotions in Advertising

One particularly effective way to track the product-emotion relation can be found in advertising, since the designerly ways of relating to emotions and the way advertising deals with them are very much alike. It is obvious that in reality advertising and product design share the function of defining emotional resonances of products. Some researches refer to the use of marketing campaigns to fasten the mental associations of the product for the consumer, in this way influencing the emotions that a product evokes.

Since the time advertising ceased to be nothing more than announcements, it has already been using emotional experiences to promote products. Thus, in early 1916 the slogan of Coca-Cola was the “pleasure of thirst”, whereas a Jordan motor car ad three years later was referring to the “erotic-experiential” pleasure of driving. It was not too long before matching feelings and experiences to products became a common practice of advertising.

This practice of connecting products to emotions as they are marketed entails a creatively great number of emotional situations besides mere pleasure, such as confidence “Clear, Confident, Connected: Windows Vista”), security (“Secure by design: MS”), attention (“She claimed attention with her clean skin: LenPak Cleansing Lotion”) or happiness (“More happy: Pepsi-Cola”) (Williamson, 2004), and negative emotions like hostility, anxiety, social incompetence and sadness. In case the advertisement uses the latter, it almost always has to end positively, as it is the way in which the advertisement should ultimately refer to the product.

It should be admitted, however, that the whole of advertising practice cannot be fitted into one single structure. Nonetheless, the semiological theory of advertising can still be useful in unveiling the relationship between advertising and emotions in such practices. Advertising operates by transferring the positively charged meaning ingrained in either the whole narrative or any particular part of the advertisement onto the object of the advertisement. In this way, the product is made an indicator of that emotional meaning, to the extent that it becomes almost that meaning itself.

During the breakdown of the signifier and the signified that takes place as the product is changed into an emotional experience, emotion defines the product and is defined through it. A clear example of the latter case is given by automobile advertising. When the pleasure stirred in the driver is transformed into “the pleasure of driving”, a specialized emotional experience is defined adversely to the general emotional category, “pleasure”. It becomes a specific kind of pleasure associated with, and even defined through, the act of driving. Advertising experts amplify this to the extent that the pleasure of driving car A is effectively discerned from the pleasure of driving car B not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. As an illustration to this argument, the slogan from Ethyl Gasoline advertisement, “Have you forgotten the fun of driving?” can be recalled. The pleasure of driving from this slogan can be contrasted to the Saab 9-5 Aero advertisement: “To find out what that Aero feeling is about … drive it.” In such a way, a product can generate its own emotional experience, which is acquired only through the purchase, possession and/or use of the product.

Influence of Consumption Emotion on Customer Satisfaction

It has been revealed by numerous studies that consumption emotion has a strong influence on consumer satisfaction. Consumers experience a consumption emotion in a direct causal sequence of events and then make the satisfaction judgment. While it is admitted that the functional conceptualization of the process has been successful in predicting satisfaction, it is difficult to disprove the growing evidence of the impact of consumption emotions on satisfaction.

Both positive and negative emotions can separately influence a consumer’s impression of a consumption experience. Empirical evidence suggests that when consumption emotions are divided into their positive and negative dimensions, both dimensions independently affect satisfaction. Positive consumption emotions affects consumer satisfaction in a positive way while negative consumption emotions affect satisfaction in a negative way.

Numerous studies have proven that there is a powerful influence of affect and emotions experienced on post-purchase behavior. The significant role that emotions play in consumers’ lives suggests that emotions can clarify behavior in situations where other concepts, such as attitude, do not give explanation of all or even a considerate part of the changeability in behavior.

Some scholars argued that when analyzing the importance of the relationship between attribute-level performance and general satisfaction, it should be admitted that the relationship could be asymmetric. It means that one part of negative performance on an attribute could have a greater influence on general satisfaction or repurchase intentions than a corresponding part of positive performance.

The prospect theory with its concept of the loss aversion makes it evident that the influence of losses is greater than the influence of gains. It means that negative resutls on attribute performance affect the overall satisfaction judgment more than the same number of positive results on attribute performance in a satisfaction context.

Consumer’s Negative Emotional Stateand its Influence on Purchase Decisions

The role of the valence, a positive or negative charge, of an emotion and its influence on judgments and persuasion has always been an important part of the study of emotion in purchase decisions.

A recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research revealed that customers experiencing the emotion of anger make different purchasing decisions than customers experiencing the emotion of sadness, demonstrating that negative emotions vary in how they affect consumer purchase decisions.

Angry consumers were 37% more inclined to stick to their existing choices than sad consumers. Putting it differently, angry individuals are less likely to see the advantages or benefits of a new product or service. People in an irritable or angry emotional states become cognitively rigid, which means that their neural nets are knotted. New information coming to them will not be perceived until they calm down.

However, consumers who were experiencing the emotion of sadness behaved the same as those in a neutral mood (i.e., a 5 on a 1 to 10 scale) when it came to consumer purchase decision. On the contrary, folks in a funk (i.e., sad sacks) are inclined to look at options attentively and carefully and then make the best choice based on the information at hand.

Different negative emotions affect consumer purchase decisions in different ways. However, they are quite predictable, and if a salesperson knows how the consumers are feeling, he can easily predict (within a certain range) how they will behave.

People in the emotional state of anger are significantly more likely to stick with the existing state of affairs. Angry peoples’ thoughts become mixed with, and are affected by, the emotional state of anger. As a consequence, they tend to overfocus and linger over their anger and, usually, do not ponder options or possibilities.

A number of researches has revealed that some negative emotions (anger, anxiety, etc.) entail a state of high psychological and physiological arousal (such as increased heart rate, increased left-prefrontal activity in the brain). On the contrary, a state of low arousal is paired with such negative emotions as sadness and depression. Since emotions serve as sources of information, they may indicate what type of action is more suitable or desired. A recent research, carried by Derek Rucker and Richard Petty, proposed that emotions with high arousal levels may indicate that activity is desired and lead consumers to prefer action-oriented events. Emotions associated with low arousal levels may indicate inactivity and make consumers prefer passive events.

This hypothesis was tested by an experiment in which the participants, undergraduate college students, were brought into angry or sad moods through reading an emotion-evoking story masked as a magazine article. The students were given the task to imagine the events being described as they read the article. The story used to evoke anger described hatred and protests against the United States in the Middle East. The story used to evoke sadness described the effects of a natural disaster on a small African village.

After reading, the students in the experiment were presented with advertisements for two vacation resorts in Orlando, Florida, and were asked which vacation they would prefer. The first vacation advertisement depicted a relaxing resort (passive frame), wereas the second advertisement described an active resort (active frame). The first frame characterized “a perfect place for people to relax and rest,” while the second frame characterized “a perfect place for people who want to actively explore.”

As a result, the hypothesis was proved to be true, and the correlation between emotion and the framing of the message was statistically significant. Participants induced with anger indicated a preference for the active resort. Vice versa, participants that were induced to sadness showed a significant preference for the passive resort. Thus, it proves that there is a correlation between the consumer’s emotional state and the level of activity, passive or active, induced by the resort.

By matching perceived activity level to a certain emotional state marketers can increase persuasion and affect consumer choice. For example, television marketers may choose to display a more passive activity in their commercials following a drama show in order to have an emotional connection with the audience. Car advertisements following a movie like “Fahrenheit 911” could benefit from focusing on the action of driving, while advertisements shown during a sad movie such as “Little Children” would be more effective featuring the relaxation and comfort of driving a car. Thus, marketers can increase the effectiveness of the advertising by designing advertisements that resonate with the activity level of emotions.

The Three Types of Product Experience

The definition of emotion as the ultimate promise of products, or emotional experience as overthrowing the product, is very close to the understanding of emotion common in the studies carried out by the design and emotion researchers. Some clarifying examples can be found in Desmet and Hekkert’s (2007, 57) categorization of “affective responses that can be experienced in human-product interaction”. Three categories are distinguished by these scholars. They are the following: the aesthetic experience, the experience of meaning and the emotional experience (Desmet and Hekkert, 2007, 589).

It should be mentioned, however, that such categorization is not unique to Desmet and Hekkert’s research as similar structure was suggested by Norman (2004) in a psychological sense and by Rafaeli and Vilnai-Yavetz (2004) in organizational theory. Such scholars as Crilly, Moultrie and Clarkson (2004, 552), also proposed a similar framework including “aesthetic impression”, “semantic interpretation” and “symbolic association. Dewey’s Art as Experience (1958) is a common source for this popular typology. It is very popular among the researchers of design and emotion movement, who cite it quite often.

Aesthetic Experience: Naturalization of Desire

The first category, “aesthetic experience” consists of the basic sensory pleasures gained from a product. This experience is attributed to a sweetness inherent to the product (Scherer, 2001 in Desmet and Hekkert, 2007, 62). Its appraisal is regarded to be provoked by the essential human motivation to look for products that give pleasure and avoid products that give displeasure.

An example of a particular interest is the pleasure provided by the sound of the “fragile porcelain lid” of a “Chinese teacup souvenir”. However, upon close examination, it becomes obvious that the emotion stirred by the fragility of the porcelain is not a natural, intuitive recognition of the material qualities of the product itself (Norman, 2004, 65-9). We cannot separate the aesthetic experience of the “Chinese teacup souvenir” from its socially-constituted meaning; that is to say, the connotations of quality and luxury the material calls forth and its being a souvenir.

The scholars do point out their emotional attachment with the teacup as a keepsake of a visit to China, and categorize this experience as the “experience of meaning”. However, the issue is not the permeability of the borders separating these categories or their being ill-designed. The product experience can exist only as a component of the system of objects as they are made significant in everyday life and in the marketplace. Putting it differently, the sound of the porcelain cannot be valued without grasping its difference from ordinary ceramics, or the exotic/orientalist experience, of which it is not only a proof but also a palpable exhibition.

Therefore, the touristic discussion affects the cup just like the advertisements do: The product is metamorphosed into the promise of a certain experience, to the extent that it comes to be the oriental experience itself. The sound of ceramic is certain to become the sound of Chinese teacups, just like the pleasure of driving becomes the pleasure of driving Saab Aero.

The inferences of this structure are meaningful. It gives a new meaning of aesthetic appraisal as a visceral-level judgement that brings about the instant emotional reaction of desiring the product (Norman, 2004, 68), and supports it with the idea of an obvious human motivation for pleasure (Desmetand Hekkert, 2007, 62). In such a way the structure performs the ideological function of rendering the consumption economy natural and a historical, relating to the internality of an individual. One more illustration of the same function is given in Desmet’s study (2006) of the emotional category of “desire”, which leads to the purification of the very notion of desire by listing it among other emotions.

Experience of Meaning: Paths for Consumption

Advertisements, brand names etc. help products build sets, or complex super-objects defined by a unique consistent meaning, and in this manner establish object pathways that couse the consumer to move from one product to the other. Design can also be viewed as a key actor in gathering products into wider clusters of meaning, and ensuring a certain product’s inclusion into the right set. One more aesthetic experience examplae, the “lightweight, high-tech-look of transparent materials” (Chang and Wu, 2004, 7), also relates to such meanings in circulation within the market place, rather than being pleasurable qualities inherent to the product.

Another category, the “experience of meaning”, even better clarifies the existence of such clusters and their congruity with particular experiences. A car model can exhibit similarity to a shark; a teddy bear can epitomize nostalgic value; and a notebook can be exclusive, masculine, old-fashioned, exquisite etc., and the appraisal of these meanings by the consumer causes the evoking of emotions (Desmet and Hekkert, 2007, 62).

Emotional Experience: Consumer Choice

The third category of product experience, “emotional experience”, regards the pleasure (or displeasure) gained from the use of the product (Desmet and Hekkert, 2007, 61). In addition, it goes in accord with the category of“semantic interpretation” (Crilly, Moultrie and Clarkson, 2004, 559), or with “behavioral level” in Norman’s classification (2004, 69), which is in essence the consumer’s appraisal of the product’s utility.

Desmet and Hekkert (2007, 61) clarify the eliciting of emotions at this level with the help of the appraisal theory, which is borrowed from emotional psychology. Appraisal means the weighing of the product against a person’s considerations, an immediate evaluation, deciding whether the product is useful, harmful, or irrelevant for personal wellfare. The induced emotions also have an action tendency , or behavioral response, which is either approaching or avoiding the product appraised.

In addition to these reasons, it is self-evident that “emotional experience”, as defined by the scholars, deals foremost with a purchase decision. Moreover, this argument is true for all three categories of product experience: no matter whether it is a desire elicited in the visceral level, or preferring one style among various product sets in the meaning level, or an appraisal of product’s utility in the emotional level, in essence, it is a matter of purchase.

For instance, Desmet (2007, 11-3) gives his analysis of the emotions induced by a navigation device, by using the appraisal theory. Here we can find evaluation of the product’s characteristics, brand, technical details, as well as the emotions the product evokes. This analysis is very similar to consumer reviews, and it proves that assessment of each aspect of the product by the consumer induces certain emotional responses that lead them toward or away from purchase.

In such a way, a critical reading of the three product experience categories makes it evident that design and emotion movement has thus far been favoring a market-oriented understanding of the human-product interaction, shaping its subject after the consumer rather than the user or the human.

Under the psychological theories and widespread scientism, product design shares the advertising arrangement, and the dreams of marketing at large, in relating to the emotional experiences of the consumer. Overlooking the fact that products are categorized and made significant in the market, consumer choice and the desire for consumption are naturalized by providing them with visceral/emotional reasons.