Motivation and Emotion: Driving Consumer Behavior

Motivations “ Motivations are the inner reasons or driving forces behind human actions as consumers are driven to address real needs. Motivations are the impetus toward providing the intended reasons for a consumer’s actions.”

What Drives Human Behavior? Homeostasis –refers to the fact that the body naturally reacts in a way to maintain a constant, normal bloodstream. The aim of homeostasis behavior is to maintain an individual in a current acceptable state. Self-Improvement –aims at changing a person’s current state to a level that is more ideal and not simply maintaining the current state of existence.

Simple Classification of Consumer Motivations Utilitarian motivation - A drive to acquire products that consumers can use to accomplish things Hedonic motivation - Involves a drive to experience something personally gratifying

Regulatory Focus Theory Consumers orient their behavior either through a prevention or promotion focus –Prevention focus - Orients consumers toward avoiding negative consequences –Promotion focus - Orients consumers toward the pursuit of their aspirations or ideals

Consumer Involvement Degree of personal relevance a consumer finds in pursuing value from a given consumption act Types of involvement: –Product –Shopping –Situational –Enduring –Emotional

Emotions Psychobiological reactions to appraisals –Psychobiological - They involve psychological processing and physical responses –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

Measuring Emotion Autonomic measures – Automatically record visceral reactions or neurological brain activity Self-report measures –Less obtrusive than biological measures

PANAS and PAD PANAS –Positive-affect-negative-affect scale –Assesses a person’s emotional state PAD – Pleasure-arousal-dominance – Used to study retail atmospherics

Understand how different consumers express emotions in different ways.

Differences in Emotional Behavior Emotional involvement –The type of deep personal interest that evokes strongly felt feelings associated with some object or activity

Differences in Emotional Behavior Emotional expressiveness –Extent to which a consumer shows outward behavioral signs and otherwise reacts obviously to emotional experiences Emotional intelligence –Capture one’s awareness of the emotions experienced in a situation, and an ability to control reactions to these emotions

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

Emotion and Cognitive Learning Interplay Mood-congruent recall –Events are associated with moods –When a mood can be controlled by marketing, consumers evaluations of a product can be influenced

Schema-Based Affect Emotions become stored as part of the meaning for a category

Self-Conscious Emotions Specific emotions that result from some evaluation or reflection of one’s own behavior –Include pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment

Emotional Contagion 1GQI 1GQI 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

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