Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Introduction to Special Issue: Consumer Emotions in the Marketplace

2019; University of Chicago Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/702851

2378-1823

Michel Tuan Pham, Leonard Lee,

Emotions and Moral Behavior

Previous articleNext article FreeConsumer Emotions in the MarketplaceIntroduction to Special Issue: Consumer Emotions in the MarketplaceMichel Tuan Pham and Leonard LeeMichel Tuan Pham Search for more articles by this author and Leonard Lee Search for more articles by this author Michel Tuan Pham ([email protected]) is the Kravis Professor of Business in Marketing at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business; Leonard Lee is Dean's Chair and associate professor of marketing at National University of Singapore, Business School.PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThat feelings and emotions are an integral part of human life is an incontestable truism. An abundance of research from a wide variety of disciplines—including but not limited to social psychology, developmental psychology, consumer psychology, organizational behavior, behavioral economics, and neuroscience—demonstrates the pivotal role that affect plays in shaping people’s perceptions, thoughts, judgments, decisions, motivations, and behaviors.In particular, research in the last 20–30 years made substantial inroads into uncovering and understanding fundamental aspects of feelings and emotions, such as the multidimensional structure of affect (Plutchik 1980; Russell 1980, 2003; Lindquist et al. 2012), the conscious and nonconscious regulation of affect (Gross 2014; Chen and Pham 2019), and the consequences of relying on affect in judgment and decision-making (Bechara, Damasio, and Damasio 2000; Pham 2007; Slovic et al. 2007; Lee, Amir, and Ariely 2009; Pham et al. 2015). In consumer research, a great deal of work explores and documents the essential influence of feelings and emotions in numerous consumption domains—from shopping (Heilman, Nakamoto, and Rao 2002; Argo, Dahl, and Morales 2006) to risk-taking (Loewenstein et al. 2001; Raghunathan, Pham, and Corfman 2006; Park and Sela 2018), and from consumers’ prosocial behavior (Lerner, Small, and Loewenstein 2004; Cavanaugh, Bettman, and Luce 2015) to their hedonic consumption experiences (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Lee and Tsai 2013). This rich and expanding tapestry of research not only makes important theoretical contributions, it also carries significant substantive managerial and policy implications.Our goal in editing this special issue was to showcase cutting-edge research on the diverse effects and implications of affect—feelings, moods, and emotions—in order to deepen and enrich our understanding of various facets of consumer behavior. The rapidly evolving marketplace, characterized by a host of structural, technological, and socioeconomic changes, has brought significant transformations to how its various constituents (i.e., consumers, marketers, policy marketers) operate and interact, making it imperative to understand the crucial influence of consumer emotions. Accordingly, in this special issue, we feature research that highlights the important role of affect in the marketplace and its practical implications for consumers, marketers, and policy makers. In doing so, we hope to contribute to the essential mission of bridging theory and practice in the study of affect in consumer research (Pham 2013).Affect, Decision-Making, and Consumer Well-BeingBuilding on an extensive body of research on dual-process models, the first three articles in this special issue examine the hot-cold dichotomy in decision-making and its influence on different aspects of consumer well-being.In the opening article, Hadi and Block (2019) explore the close correspondence and intriguing substitutability between physical temperature and affective (hot) and deliberative (cold) decision-making (Metcalfe and Mischel 1999; Loewenstein and O’Donoghue 2004). The authors show that the affective mode of decision-making generates physical warmth. Adopting a thermoregulatory framework, they find that exposure to uncomfortable temperatures (that are either too cold or too warm) automatically triggers a greater reliance on feelings (vs. logic) in decision-making, so as to compensate for the non-optimal physical temperatures experienced.The hot-cold dichotomy also maps onto people’s lay beliefs about decision attributes associated with rationality (e.g., Park and Sela 2018). In three studies, Li and Hsee (2019) find that when consumers are encouraged to “be rational” in choosing between different products, they tend to rely on “cold” factors such as economic value, rather than “hot” factors such as hedonic experience. However, by doing so, consumers may end up with choices that they are less happy with. These findings underscore the reality that even though feelings often play a positive role in decision-making (Pham 2007; ; Stephen and Pham 2008; Pham, Lee, and Stephen 2012), lay beliefs about rationality and utility maximization may lead us astray and, ironically, result in less optimal decisions.The gap between hot and cold decision processes can be widened by time. An otherwise hot emotion becomes colder the further it is from the focal event that triggers the emotion (e.g., Chang and Pham 2013). Building on this time dependence of affective experiences, Chun, Park, and Thomas (2019) examine the difference between anticipated regret and experienced regret in response to unhealthy consumption. In particular, they investigate why unhealthy consumption may not trigger the same level of regret as consumers may have anticipated prior to consumption. The researchers find that “hot regret” experienced immediately following indulgent consumption activates a defensive response that attenuates the intensity of the felt regret. In contrast, the “cold regret” that consumers anticipate when thinking about future indulgent consumption does not elicit a defensive response, thereby retaining its subjective intensity. This research adds to a substantial body of work in social psychology on affect misforecasting and the workings of the so-called psychological immune system (Gilbert et al. 1998). Chun and colleagues’ findings have clear implications for the self-regulation and policy regulation of unhealthy consumption.Affect and Self-ControlAlthough a guilt-laden consumption experience (e.g., feeling guilty after indulging in unhealthy foods) may automatically set consumers’ psychological immune system into motion to make them feel better about their consumption, people can proactively engage in various measures to protect their indulgent consumption. In other words, just as consumers may employ a host of commitment devices to guard against potential temptations that interfere with their higher order self-control goals (Wertenbroch 1998), they may also strategically seek “excuses” to a priori justify their impending lack of self-control.Using a combination of field studies and lab experiments, two articles in this issue feature instances in which consumers employ such “self-indulgence precommitment devices” in the marketplace. Interestingly, these articles together suggest that even in the domain of consumption indulgence (cf. consumption self-control), consumers often demonstrate some degree of strategic sophistication.Hagen, Krishna, and McFerran (2019) document a seemingly prevalent example of precommitment to indulgence in the domain of food consumption. To reduce the guilt that consumers anticipate experiencing when eating unhealthy foods, they may prefer to be served by others rather than to serve themselves the unhealthy foods, so as to avoid having to bear the responsibility for their indulgence. Consistent with this guilt-reduction motivation, the authors find in one of their studies that consumers’ preference to be served is attenuated when they have a justification to indulge (e.g., if they have been exercising) and thus anticipate less guilt with their unhealthy consumption.Rather than looking to their social context for justifications to indulge, consumers may rely on particular attributes of market offerings to alleviate anticipated guilt. Matherly, Ghosh, and Joshi (2019) propose that while consumers are cognizant that price promotions may help to reduce feelings of guilt when purchasing indulgent products (e.g., a pleasure-oriented spa service), they may also be aware that this guilt-alleviation quality of promotions is fleeting. Therefore, consumers would rather purchase a promotional product with a more limited consumption horizon than one with a more extended (and rationally more optimal) consumption horizon. Consistent with this proposition, the authors find in their analysis of field data from a website offering large discounts that discounted products with shorter redemption windows are more popular than those with longer redemption windows. Further qualitative analyses of the products suggest that this result can be explained by the lower level of anticipated guilt associated with discount products with shorter redemption windows.Affect, Promotions, and the Pain of PayingWhile promotions may help to lessen feelings of guilt from indulgent expenditures and alleviate the pain of paying, Chang-Yuan Lee and colleagues (2019) show that different types of promotions may vary in the degree to which they help reduce the pain of paying. In particular, the results of three field experiments conducted at a grocery store show that small probabilistic price promotions (e.g., “1% chance it’s free”) resulted in greater sales than comparable fixed-price promotions (e.g., “1% off”). Additional results suggest that this is because small probabilistic discounts help reduce the pain of paying. These findings have clear managerial implications for retailers, suggesting small probabilistic discounts as a practical means of overcoming psychological impediments to consumer spending.Positive Affect and Consumer BehaviorAside from the various negative emotions (guilt, regret, pain) investigated in the aforementioned articles, positive emotions lie at the core of two other articles in this special issue. These articles examine how products with nostalgic references (Lasaleta and Loveland 2019) and the enactment of relationship rituals (Garcia-Rada, Sezer, and Norton 2019) can generate positive emotions, thereby promoting a sense of authenticity and fostering romantic love, respectively.Based on the argument that nostalgia is a past- and self-referencing emotion, Lasaleta and Loveland (2019) find that “retro-styling” (contemporary objects with design elements that reference the past) engenders feelings of nostalgia, which in turn lead to greater feelings of authenticity by bolstering a sense of self-continuity. As a result, when their perceived authenticity is threatened (e.g., when they don counterfeit products), consumers exhibit a preference for retro-styled objects as a form of compensatory consumption.Garcia-Rada, Sezer, and Norton (2019), on the other hand, propose that relationship rituals—that is, activities that couples enact repeatedly and carry symbolic meaning (e.g., making coffee for a partner every morning, going to a movie every Friday)—can increase relationship satisfaction by promoting positive feelings and reinforcing mutual commitment. These findings have obvious implication for people’s well-being. Interestingly, these authors find that the majority of relationship rituals involve some form of consumption.Incidental Affect and Consumer BehaviorWhile many of the articles in this issue center on particular integral emotions, incidental affect that consumers experience in their daily lives may also influence their behavior in seemingly unrelated domains. Wyer and colleagues (2019) provide a review of the effects of incidental emotions, drawing upon a rich body of empirical work that they and other researchers have conducted. Importantly, while they find that negative incidental emotions may trigger compensatory consumption in ostensibly unrelated domains, positive incidental emotions typically lead to general behavioral dispositions that unexpectedly guide behaviors in unrelated domains.Together, the articles in this special issue highlight the fact that feelings and emotions play an instrumental role in driving substantively important effects in myriad consumption domains. We hope that the insights and discussions in these articles will spur further related research and continue to enhance our understanding of consumer emotions in the evolving marketplace.ReferencesArgo, Jennifer J., Darren W. Dahl, and Andrea C. Morales (2006), “Consumer Contamination: How Consumers React to Products Touched by Others,” Journal of Marketing, 70 (2), 81–94.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarBechara, Antoine, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio R. Damasio (2000), “Emotion, Decision Making and the Orbitofrontal Cortex,” Cerebral Cortex, 10 (3), 295–307.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarCavanaugh, Lisa A., James R. Bettman, and Mary F. Luce (2015), “Feeling Love and Doing More for Distant Others: Specific Positive Emotions Differentially Affect Prosocial Consumption,” Journal of Marketing Research, 52 (5), 657–73.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarChang, Hannah H., and Michel T. Pham (2013), “Affect as a Decision-Making System of the Present,” Journal of Consumer Research, 40 (1), 42–63.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarChen, Charlene Y., and Michel T. Pham (2019), “Affect Regulation and Consumer Behavior,” Consumer Psychology Review, 2, 114–44.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarChun, HaeEun H., Joowon Park, and Manoj Thomas (2019), “Cold Anticipated Regret versus Hot Experienced Regret: Why Consumers Fail to Regret Unhealthy Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarGarcia-Rada, Ximena, Ovul Sezer, and Michael I. Norton (2019), “Rituals and Nuptials: The Emotional and Relational Consequences of Relationship Rituals,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarGilbert, Daniel T., Elizabeth C. Pinel, Timothy D. Wilson, Stephen J. Blumberg, and Thailia P. Wheatley (1998), “Immune Neglect: A Source of Durability Bias in Affective Forecasting,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75 (3), 617–38.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarGross, James J. (2014), “Emotion Regulation: Conceptual and Empirical Foundations,” in Handbook of Emotion Regulation, ed. James J. Gross, New York: Guilford, 3–20.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHadi, Rhonda, and Lauren Block (2019), “Warm Hearts and Cool Heads: Uncomfortable Temperature Influences Reliance on Affect in Decision-Making,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarHagen, Linda, Aradhna Krishna, and Brent McFerran (2019), “Outsourcing Responsibility for Indulgent Food Consumption to Prevent Negative Affect,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarHeilman, Carrie M., Kent Nakamoto, and Ambar G. Rao (2002), “Pleasant Surprises: Consumer Response to Unexpected In-Store Coupons,” Journal of Marketing Research, 39 (2), 242–52.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarHolbrook, Morris B., and Elizabeth C. Hirschman (1982), “The Experiential Aspects of Consumption: Consumer Fantasies, Feelings, and Fun,” Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (2), 132–40.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarLasaleta, Janine D., and Katherine E. Loveland (2019), “What’s New Is Old Again: Nostalgia and Retro-Styling in Response to Authenticity Threats,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarLee, Chang-Yuan, Carey K. Morewedge, Guy Hochman, and Dan Ariely (2019), “Small Probabilistic Discounts Stimulate Spending: Pain of Paying in Price Promotions,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarLee, Leonard, On Amir, and Dan Ariely (2009), “In Search of Homo Economicus: Cognitive Noise and the Role of Emotion in Preference Consistency,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (2), 173–87.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarLee, Leonard, and Claire I. Tsai (2013), “How Price Promotions Influence Postpurchase Consumption Experience over Time,” Journal of Consumer Research, 40 (5), 943–59.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarLerner, Jennifer S., Deborah A. Small, and George Loewenstein (2004), “Heart Strings and Purse Strings: Carryover Effects of Emotions on Economic Decisions,” Psychological Science, 15 (5), 337–41.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarLi, Xilin, and Christopher K. Hsee (2019), “Being ‘Rational’ Is Not Always Rational: Encouraging People to Be Rational Leads to Hedonically Suboptimal Decisions,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarLindquist, Kirsten A., Tor D. Wager, Hedy Kober, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, and Lisa F. Barrett (2012), “The Brain Basis of Emotion: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35 (3), 121–43.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarLoewenstein, George F., and Ted O’Donoghue (2004), “Animal Spirits: Affective and Deliberative Processes in Economic Behavior,” Working Paper. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.539843.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarLoewenstein, George F., Elke U. Weber, Christopher K. Hsee, and Ned Welch (2001), “Risk as Feelings,” Psychological Bulletin, 127 (2), 267–86.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarMatherly, Ted, Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh, and Yogesh V. Joshi (2019), “The Freedom of Constraint: How Perceptions of Time Limitations Alleviate Guilt from Two-Phase Indulgent Consumption,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarMetcalfe, Janet, and Walter Mischel (1999), “A Hot/Cool-System Analysis of Delay of Gratification: Dynamics of Willpower,” Psychological Review, 106 (1), 3–19.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarPark, Jane Jeongin, and Aner Sela (2018), “Not My Type: Why Affective Decision-Makers Are Reluctant to Make Financial Decisions,” Journal of Consumer Research, 45 (August), 298–319.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarPham, Michel T. (2007), “Emotion and Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence,” Review of General Psychology, 11 (2), 155–78.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar——— (2013), “The Seven Sins of Consumer Psychology,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 23 (October), 411–23.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarPham, Michel T., Ali Faraji-Rad, Olivier Toubia, and Leonard Lee (2015), “Affect as an Ordinal System of Utility Assessment,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 131, 81–94.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarPham, Michel T., Leonard Lee, and Andrew T. Stephen (2012), “Feeling the Future: The Emotional Oracle Effect,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (October), 461–77.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarPlutchik, Robert (1980), Emotion: A Psychoevolutionary Synthesis, New York: Harper & Row.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarRaghunathan, Rajagopal, Michel Tuan Pham, and Kim P. Corfman (2006), “Informational Properties of Anxiety and Sadness, and Displaced Coping,” Journal of Consumer Research, 32 (March), 596–602.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarRussell, James A. (1980), “A Circumplex Model of Affect,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39 (6), 1161–78.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar——— (2003), “Core Affect and the Psychological Construction of Emotion,” Psychological Review, 110 (1), 145–72.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarSlovic, Paul, Melissa L. Finucane, Ellen Peters, and Donald G. MacGregor (2007), “The Affect Heuristic,” European Journal of Operational Research, 177 (3), 1333–52.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarStephen, Andrew T., and Michel Tuan Pham (2008), “On Feelings as a Heuristic for Making Offers in Ultimatum Negotiations,” Psychological Science, 19 (10), 1051–58.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarWertenbroch, Klaus (1998), “Consumption Self-Control by Rationing Purchase Quantities of Virtue and Vice,” Marketing Science, 17 (4), 317–37.First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarWyer, Robert S., Jr., Ping Dong, Xun (Irene) Huang, Zhongqiang (Tak) Huang, and Lisa S. Wan (2019), “The Effect of Incidental Emotions on Judgments and Behavior in Unrelated Situations: A Review,” Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 4 (2), in this issue.First citation in articleGoogle Scholar Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of the Association for Consumer Research Volume 4, Number 2April 2019Consumer Emotions in the MarketplaceGuest Editors: Michel Tuan Pham and Leonard Lee Sponsored by the Association for Consumer Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/702851 HistoryPublished online March 01, 2019 © 2019 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Madeline Judge, Olivia de Hoog, Goda Perlaviciute, Nadja Contzen, Linda Steg From toilet to table: value-tailored messages influence emotional responses to wastewater products, Biotechnology for Biofuels 14, no.11 (Mar 2021).https://doi.org/10.1186/s13068-021-01931-zTobias Otterbring, Alexandra Festila, Michal Folwarczny Replication and extension of framing effects to compliance with health behaviors during pandemics, Safety Science 134 (Feb 2021): 105065.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2020.105065