Psychological State of Consumer Behavior

The first article tries to establish the elements in the advertisements that affect the interests and attention to the advert through their effects on emotions.  Teixeira starts with the hypothesis that the commercial breaks in the TV are annoying to the consumers and marketers may turn to the popular sites in the websites such as Hulu and You Tube. His study concentrates on the emotional components of the viewers that hold and attract them to advertisements. 

The second article relates to emotions and attitude of the consumers. At any point, companies have confidence that their loyal customer will always remain stuck in the company no matter the changes that occur in the market, given that the company maintains the product quality. Frances X. Frei and doctoral student Ryan W. Buell from Harvard Business School carry out an enquiry on this.

Over time, the functionality of socially-focused business has been perplexing, especially based on how it has been able to attract a lot of people. The likes of Match.com and eHarmony and such platform as Facebook, Zynga and Path have enjoyed a wide use, and bringing people together and establishing relationships. Mikolaj Piskorski carries out an enquiry to establish the emotional and motivational factors that have led to such increases. He is motivated to carry out the research based on the fact that, the $2 billion dating industry that carries its business online only consists of 14000 businesses as stated by IBISWorld.com.

 Elfriede Penz and Margaret K. Hogg conducted a research on consumer behavior based on mixed emotions. Consumer ambivalence is critical in conflict that arises in avoidance-approach forces within a customer. To access the effect of mixed behaviors on consumer shopping, Elfriede and Margaret strive to investigate and conceptualize the multi-dimensional forces of avoidance and approach conflicts that consumer experiences as the retail environment changes.

Derek D. Rucker and Richard E. Petty conduct a study to establish the impact of emotions and persuasion in consumer behaviour. They are provoked by the fact that emotions create a source of information through signals that may suggest a particular thing being preferred more or not. They propose that, emotions that have high arousal impacts may suggest desirability.

Methodology

To carry out the study, Teixeira paid 58 adults who were supposed to watch a clip with duration of four minutes. The clip was followed by a 30 minutes series of advertisements on consumer products. He presented 28 advertisements, where 14 of them were supposed to evoke joy and surprise, because they were decidedly provocative. The rest 14 adverts were not provocative and were emotionally neutral. Each of the neutral clips was played in between the emotional buffers. He used a camera to record the facial expression of the participants and an infrared eye tracker was used to measure the eye movements.

Frances X. Frei and Ryan W. Buell tried to analyze the consumer behaviour by looking at their response based on the service levels, competitive strategy and customer loyalty. They collected data from more than 20 states between 2002 and 2006 from the US domestic bank. The bank used by the researcher operated in more than 644 isolated geographical regions.

Mikolaj Piskorski study involved observing the behaviour of the users based on their height, body type, gender and age. The data collected was on the pattern of usage: how they learn about a particular profile, the average profile viewed and the number of introductory texts sent after viewing such profiles. He studied 500,000 OKCupid members who were a random sample from the total users.

Elfriede and Margaret used cross-country research that compared offline and online consumers. Their study investigated the influence of products, situations and reference groups on the consumer’s consumption plans. They also analyzed how consumer ambivalence affected their avoidance-approach conflict in different market settings.

To test the hypothesis, Derek D. Rucker and Richard E. Petty carried out an experiment to a group of students who were induced to read a saddening article of the operation of the United States in Africa. They were also induced to anger through an article describing the operation of the United State in the Middle East. Afterwards, the participants were then presented with adverts for vacation resorts in Florida and Orlando. One of the resorts described an active frame, while the other described a passive frame. 

Findings

Teixeira found out that, the pattern of attention as displayed on the screen was different. This depended on the experience that individual had as reflected by the emotions. The eyes would move differently based on the level of joy or surprise experienced. The more attentive viewer was likely not to skip the next advert. He was able to identify a definite pattern of elements of emotions that commanded more attention. An advert would be more effective in capturing attention, if it was evoking surprise. On the other hand, to retain attention, advertisement needed to be evoking joy.

Frances X. Frei and Ryan W. Buell found out that there always are trade-off between the service levels and the prices charged. All customers have their own levels of sensitivity to services and this depends on how prices and qualities of services affect their attitudes and emotions. The bank studied based its services and quality of service on the attitude of people in different regions. They realized that the bank concentrated more on the quality of their services, where the attitudes of consumers were low and where complaints were common. In this way, the bank was able to hold those customers.  They realized that the customer of the bank were more sensitive to the services, if the bank held an advantage in a particular service for long duration within the local market.  

Mikolaj Piskorski observed that, the relatively overweight, shorter and older men tended to be more motivated to make use of the sites for the profiles of younger, slimmer and taller counterparts. From the female sample, the taller ones tended to be more motivated to view most profiles. He realizes that the overweight, shorter and older crowed were less motivated to send messages even after viewing many profiles. The result indicates that unless the site gives motivation, the group of people who expect rejection is likely not to make use of the service. In addition, though the women have majority of the profiles, they are not motivated to send messages to men. According to Mikolaj Piskorski, this is as result of the traditional norms that men should make the first move.  

Elfriede and Margaret conducted the study in shops, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, and H7. Distinction in consumer behavior was realized between the offline and online consumers in shops H1, H2, H3, and H4. On the other side, there was no clear distinction between the online and the offline consumers on the basis of avoidance-approach conflicts. The mixed emotions impacted on some market-related personal factors and some product-related factors affected the consumer’s purchasing intentions. 

In the research for Rucker and Petty, the findings confirmed the hypothesis that  the students, who were induced to anger, preferred the resort that was active while those induced to sadness preferred a passive resort. This finding suggests that there exists a relationship between the consumers` level of activity; active or passive and their emotional state.

Conclusion

 The findings indicated that the advertisers should make use elements that provoke surprise on the part of the actual and potential customers. The surprises should then be followed by periods of joy that are long enough to be able to hold the attention of the viewers. This is based on the fact that, if there is no surprise at the beginning, then,  the viewer may not be patient enough to wait till the end for a possible surprise.

The research by Frances X. Frei and Ryan W. Buell indicates that the company should be comfortable if it has some loyal customers. This is because these customers may be the first to leave, if there are other market entrants who offer better services. This is based on the increased expectations for a service in a particular market. The firms should realize that, if any changes in service or quality occur, more of its loyal customers are likely to be affected than those in the competitor’s firm.

Mikolaj Piskorski concludes that the companies in the dating industry should learn to know the other factors for their target groups that affect them emotionally and hence motivate or demotivate them. He notes that such factors include gender, body weight and age. He also notes that OKCupid has some dedication functions that serve to make the users motivated. The company has the “Quiver” function, which has algorithm for rating each other. Despite there being some demotivating factors, where a person is rated highly, he is motivated to make more use of the service. The other function that he realized to be important was the “visitor” function, it helps one to know how many people have visited his profile and hence get the motivated. He suggested that the academics and the entrepreneurs should consider these findings when rolling out some online social platforms.

Elfriede and Margaret concluded that it is up to  retailers to lower the impact of emotional responses to their clients. This is because mixed consumer emotions may result to the consumers leaving the store for another one. They state that, the online shops will be able to succeed are those that manage to initiate a behavioral reactions among the consumers that make them return to the website to explore it more and not for search only.

Rucker and Petty note that consumption choice by the consumers can be influenced by matching the perceived levels of activity to emotional states. For example, television marketers may display a persuasive activity after a drama show to be able to emotionally connect with the consumers.  

Limitations

The limitation in the Teixeira study is that, there could be other factors that cause distraction to the viewer. Such effect could arise from having prolonged adverts and hence the advertisers should ensure that the adverts are short. In case of Frances X. Frei and Ryan W. Buell, the limitation is that the customer tastes may change making them shift to the substitutes from a competitor’s firm. According to Mikolaj Piskorski, some functions to motivate people in the dating industry may lead to detrimental effects where an individual is rated lowly. In the research by Elfriede and Margaret, they note that the mixed emotions are complex and hence difficult to get the consequences of such emotions on consumer purchasing behaviour. Rucker and Petty note that while emotions may be used in marketing, advertising and business strategy, emotions are subjective and their impact on consumer’s preferred activities may differ significantly hence limiting the external validity.