CONSUMER MOTIVATION AND EMOTION
Motivations
The inner reasons or driving forces behind human action as consumers are driven to address real needs. Human motivations are oriented toward two key groups of behavior:
Homeostasis the body naturally reacts in a way so as to maintain a constant, normal blood stream. Self-improvement changing ones current state to a level that is more ideal.
Classify basic consumer motivations.
Exhibit 5.1: An Illustration of Consumer Motivations According to Maslows Hierarchy
Maslows Motive Hierarchy
Advanced 5 4 Self-actualization: This involves the desire for selffulfillment, to become all that one is capable of becoming. Esteem: Desires for status, superiority, self-respect, and prestige are examples of esteem needs. These needs relate to the individuals feelings of usefulness and accomplishment. Belongingness: Belongingness motives are reflected in a desire for love, friendship, affiliation, and group acceptance. Safety: Feeling physical safety and security, stability, familiar surroundings, and so forth are manifestations of safety needs. They are aroused after physiological motives are minimally satisfied, and before other motives. Physiological: Food, water, sleep etc. are physiological motives. Unless they are minimally satisfied, other motives are not activated.
1 Basic
Exhibit 5.2: Utilitarian and Hedonic Motivations Lead to Consumer Behaviors
Consumer Involvement
Represents the degree of personal relevance a consumer finds in pursuing value from a given consumption act. Types:
Product Shopping Situational Enduring Emotional
Involvement
Is this high involvement or irrational behavior?
Describe consumer emotions and demonstrate how they help shape value.
Emotions
Psychobiological reactions to appraisals.
Psychobiological because they involve psychological processing and physical responses. Create visceral responses certain feeling states are tied to behavior in a very direct way.
Cognitive Appraisal Theory
Describes how specific types of thoughts can serve as a basis for specific emotions. Cognitive appraisals:
Anticipation Agency Equity Outcomes
Exhibit 5.4: Visceral Responses to Emotions by Consumers
Emotion Terminology
Mood a transient (temporary and changing) and general affective state.
Mood-congruent judgments the value of a target is influenced in a consistent way by ones mood.
Affect represents the feelings a consumer has about a particular product or activity.
Apply different approaches to measuring consumer emotions.
Measuring Emotion
Autonomic measures
Self-report measures
PANAS and PAD
PANAS positive-affect-negative-affect scale assesses a persons emotional state PAD pleasure-arousal-dominance used to study retail atmospherics
Understand how different consumers express emotions in different ways.
Emotions
What is this consumer feeling?
Differences in Emotional Behavior
Emotional involvement
Emotional expressiveness
Emotional intelligence
Exhibit 5.7: Emotional Intelligence Consists of Multiple Elements
Define and apply the concepts of schema-based affect and emotional contagion.
Emotion and Cognitive Learning Interplay
Semantic wiring Consumers link concepts for memory retrieval. The active process and storage of knowledge is influenced by emotions. When marketing presents a product that evokes emotions, consumer recall is likely to increase. Mood-congruent recall Events are associated with moods. When a mood can be controlled by marketing, consumers evaluations of a product can be influenced. Nostalgia Events in the past may be remembered more positively than they were in reality. Consumers can make purchases based on nostalgic feelings
Schema-Based Affect
Emotions become stored as part of the meaning for a category.
Exhibit 5.10: Examples of SchemaBased Affect
Aesthetic Labor
To generate a specific emotional reaction from consumers, employees carefully manage their personal appearance.
Self-Conscious Emotions
Specific emotions that result from some evaluation or reflection of ones own behavior, including pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment.
Emotional Contagion
Emotional contagion represents the extent to which an emotional display by one person influences the emotional state of a bystander. Emotional labor workers have to overtly manage their own emotional displays as part of the requirements of the job. Product contamination refers to the diminished positive feelings someone has about a product because another consumer has handled the product.
