CHAPTER 5
MOTIVATION AND EMOTION: DRIVING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
WHAT DO YOU THINK POLLING QUESTION
I do not allow emotions to control my behavior.
Strongly disagree 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Strongly agree
Have students access www.cengagebrain.com to answer the polling questions for each chapter of
CB. Ask them to take the online poll to see how their answers compare with other students taking
a consumer behavior course across the country. Then turn to the last page of the chapter to find
the What Others Have Thought box feature. This graph is a snapshot of how other consumer
behavior students have answered this polling question thus far.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
L01 Understand what initiates human behavior.
L02 Classify basic consumer motivations.
L03 Describe consumer emotions and demonstrate how they help shape value.
L04 Apply different approaches to measuring consumer emotions.
L05 Understand how different consumers express emotions in different ways.
L06 Define and apply the concepts of schema-based affect and emotional contagion.
SUGGESTED LECTURE OPENER
During an economic downturn consumers tighten their belts and more carefully watch their
spending habits. Marketers must keep up with the economic situation by understanding
consumer’s priorities. During a recession many marketers avoid promoting “convenience”
products and packaging, for which most consumers are no longer willing to a pay a premium.
Name brand marketers turn to discount strategies such as coupons, incentives, and volume
discounts to keep up with consumers who are trading down to non-premium brands. [Source:
“Consumer Thriftiness Signals Need to New Marketing Approach,” July 23, 2010,
http://www.rbr.com/media-news/research/26135.html]
LECTURE OUTLINE WITH POWERPOINT® SLIDES
Slide 1
Slide 2
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LO1. Understand what initiates human behavior.
What Drives Human Behavior?
Slide 3
Simply put, 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
“answer” or “intended reason” for a consumer’s actions. Human motivations are oriented toward
two key groups of behavior: homeostasis and self-improvement.
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 a person’s sense of
equilibrium.
Self-Improvement  Self-improvement motivation aims at changing a person’s current state to a
level that is more ideal and not simply maintaining the current state of existence.
Slide 4
Q: Ask students to name their motivation for taking this course, other courses
at college, and for working an outside job.
A: Student answers will vary, but point them in the direction of the different
types of motivations.
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LO2. Classify basic consumer motivations.
A General Hierarchy of Motivation
Slide 5
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory describes consumers as people addressing a finite set of
prioritized needs. Consumers first seek value by satisfying the most basic needs. Then, they
gradually move toward upper levels of value. The following list displays the set of prioritized
needs starting with the most basic need (see Exhibit 5.1).





Physiological – The need for basic survival
Safety and security – The need to be secure and protected
Belongingness and love – The need to feel like a member of a family or community
Esteem – The need to be recognized as a person of worth
Self-actualization – The need for personal fulfillment
Maslow’s hierarchy may operate differently in various parts of the world. Because motivations
can determine what type and amounts of value are sought by consumers, value judgments can be
culturally different. Generally, the most basic needs are addressed with utilitarian value; as needs
become more elaborate, hedonic value is sought to satisfy the need state.
Slide 6
Q: Have students provide their own examples of Maslow’s hierarchy.
A: Answers will vary based on students’ own motivations, which is an
important point to highlight.
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Simpler Classification of Consumer Motivations
A simple but very useful way to understand consumer behavior is to classify motives based on
whether a particular need can best be addressed by utilitarian or hedonic value as shown in
Exhibit 5.2.
1. Utilitarian Motivation  Involves a desire to acquire products that can be used to
accomplish something. Utilitarian motivation shares much in common with the idea of
maintaining behavior, and these motivations work much like homeostasis.
2. Hedonic Motivation  Involves a desire to experience something gratifying. These
behaviors are usually emotionally satisfying.
Slide 7
Consumer Involvement
Consumer involvement represents the degree of personal relevance that a consumer finds in
pursuing value from a given consumption act. Involvement is intimately linked to motivation.
Thus, when a consumer is highly involved, there is a greater chance that relatively high value
will be achieved from a pleasant consumption outcome.
Consumer Involvement as a Moderator
A moderating variable is a variable that changes the nature of the relationship between two other
variables. A consumer with high involvement is likely to spend more time evaluating alternatives
because the consumer is motivated to do so.
Slide 8
Different Types of Involvement
1. Product involvement – Represents the personal relevance of some product category.
Product enthusiasts are consumers with very high involvement in some category, as
shown in Exhibit 5.3.
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a. High consumer product involvement – Products on which a person might conduct
research or ask friends for input, such as a new dress or television.
b. Low consumer product involvement – Products that might represent everyday needs
or that do not take much forethought to purchase.
2. Shopping involvement – Represents the personal relevance of shopping activities. From
a utilitarian value perspective, highly involved shoppers are more likely to process
information about deals and to react to price reductions and limited offers that create
better deals.
3. Situational involvement – Represents temporary involvement associated with some
eminent purchase situation. Situational involvement often occurs when consumers are
shopping for something with relatively low involvement but a relatively high price.
4. Enduring involvement – In contrast to situational involvement, enduring involvement
represents an ongoing interest in some product or opportunity. Enduring involvement is
often associated with hedonic value because learning about, shopping for, or consuming a
product associated with high enduring involvement is personally gratifying. Consumers
with high enduring involvement sometimes earn labels, such as soccer hooligan or
clothes horse!
5. Emotional involvement – Represents the emotional level of a consumer when involved
with some specific consumption activity. Emotional involvement is closely related to
enduring involvement because only those things that consumers care most about will
evoke high levels of emotional involvement.
Slide 9
Slide 10
LO3. Describe consumer emotions and demonstrate how they help shape value.
Consumer Emotions and Value
Slide 11
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Emotion
An emotion is a psychobiological reaction to a human appraisal. Emotions are considered to be
psychobiological because they involve psychological processing and physical responses.
Emotions create visceral responses, which are certain feeling states that are tied to physical
reactions and behavior in a very direct way.
Emotions are extremely important to consumer behavior and marketing because
consumers react most immediately to their feelings. Motivation and emotion both contain
“motion” as a root word. Emotions are hard-wired to behavior, thereby creating a close link
between emotions, consumer behavior, and value. To this extent, marketing success is
determined by creating emotions because the consumer derives value to the extent that desirable
emotional states can be created.
Slide 12
Q: Facebook has become an outlet for people to express their emotions. Ask
students to think of other examples when they have encountered someone
who was emotional. How would they describe that person?
A: Answers will vary. Emotions are deeply tied to personal motivations and
traits. Different people have different motivations and traits. Thus,
personality characteristics can affect the way that they demonstrate their
emotions.
Cognitive Appraisal Theory
The cognitive appraisal theory represents an increasingly popular school of thought that
describes how specific types of thoughts can serve as a basis for specific emotions. Four types of
cognitive appraisals are especially relevant for consumer behavior.
1. Anticipation appraisals – Focus on the future and can elicit emotions such as
hopefulness or anxiety.
2. Agency appraisals – Review responsibility for events and can evoke gratefulness,
frustration, or sadness.
3. Equity appraisal – Consider the fairness of some event and can evoke emotions such as
warmth or anger.
4. Outcomes appraisal – Consider how something turned out relative to one’s goals and
can evoke emotions such as joyfulness, satisfaction, sadness, or pride.
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Slide 13
Slide 14
Emotion Terminology
Mood
Mood can be distinguished from the broader concept of emotion based on specificity and time.
Consumer mood(s) can be thought of as transient (temporary and changing). Moods are
generally considered less intense than many other emotional experiences, but they can influence
consumer behavior.
Employees’ moods can also affect consumption outcomes as they interact with consumer
mood. Consumers seem to be most receptive to an employee with a matching mood rather than
an employee with a constantly positive mood as illustrated in Exhibit 5.5.
A consumer’s mood can serve as a type of frame that can transfer into product value
judgments. Consumers make mood congruent judgments, such as those in which the value of a
target is influenced in a consistent way by one’s mood. These effects are observed both when
consumers are judging the value of products that they currently own and when they are judging
the value of products that they are considering purchasing.
Affect
Consumer affect represents the feelings a consumer experiences when going through the
consumption process, and they encompass both emotion and mood. This is more often used to
represent the feelings a consumer has about a particular product or activity.
Slide 15
Slide 16
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Q: Have students share examples of a recent shopping or dining experience
where the salesperson/waiter was in a bad mood. What was the result of the
experience? Did the salesperson’s/waiter’s mood affect the way that
students shopped or dined?
A: Answers will vary. This is a good time to use Exhibit 5.5 as a discussion
topic.
LO4. Apply different approaches to measuring consumer emotions.
Measuring Emotion
Slide 17
Marketing and consumer researchers place a great deal of emphasis on properly measuring
consumer emotion because emotions play a key role in shaping value.
Autonomic Measures
These measures are automatically recorded based on either automatic visceral reactions or
neurological brain activity. These measures include facial reactions, physiological responses
(such as sweating in a galvanic skin response [GSR] or lie detector test), heart rate, and brain
imaging (a measure that can document activity in areas of the brain responsible for certain
specific emotions).
Self-report Measures
These measures usually require consumers to recall their affect state from a recent experience or
to state the affect they are feeling at a given point in time. These tests usually involve a
questionnaire and are not perfect, but they are generally valid enough to be useful to consumer
and marketing researchers. However, many different options exist for applying self-report
measures, and each option is usually based on a somewhat different perspective of emotion
theory.
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Slide 18
PANAS
PANAS stands for the positive-affect-negative-affect scale and allows respondents to self-report
the extent to which they feel one of 20 emotional adjectives. The PANAS scale is generally
applied to capture the relative amount of positive and negative emotion experienced by a
consumer at a given point in time.
When consumer researchers are studying highly involving and complex situations, the
PANAS scale allows them to capture both positive and negative dimensions of emotional
experience. The possibility exists that each dimension might explain somewhat unique
experiences.
Q: Have you had a bad hair day? How does it make you feel? Can you describe
your feelings based on the PANAS scale?
A: Answers will vary. A discussion of the PANAS scale and the ways negative
feelings cause you to realize you need to do something to change those
feelings should follow.
PAD
PAD stands for pleasure-arousal-dominance. This scale asks consumers to rate their feelings by
using a number of semantic differential (bipolar opposite) items that capture emotions in these
three dimensions. The theory behind PAD is that the evaluative dimension of emotion—
pleasure—is bipolar, meaning that if someone feels joyful, he or she cannot also experience
sadness.
The PAD approach has been applied widely in retail atmospherics and has been used to
study behavior in all manner of environments, including museums and parks. It has also been
applied to advertising contexts. Because the scale captures arousal separately, the approach is
advantageous when the degree of activation or excitement is of particular interest.
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Slide 19
LO5. Understand how different consumers express emotions in different ways.
Differences in Emotional Behavior
Slide 20
Not all consumers react emotionally or show their emotions to the same extent or in the same
way as other consumers.
Slide 21
Emotional Involvement
Emotional involvement is the type of deep personal interest that evokes strong feelings simply
from the thoughts or behavior associated with some object or activity. Generally speaking,
emotional involvement drives a person to consume through relatively strong hedonic motivations
and can often make a consumer appear irrational. Emotional involvement can be increased by
providing something extra along with products that are purchased.
When a consumer experiences enjoyment in an activity, he or she has achieved a state of
flow, designating an extremely high emotional involvement in which a consumer is engrossed in
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an activity. Consumers can become so involved, however, with video games or social
networking that they become addicted to the activity.
Online consumers can also pursue a flow state while shopping; however, interruptions in
Internet service, poor navigational clues, or slow page load times can all inhibit the flow
experience and lower both utilitarian and hedonic shopping value.
Emotional Expressiveness
Emotional expressiveness pertains to the extent to which a consumer shows outward behavioral
signs and otherwise reacts in an obvious manner to emotional experiences. Consumers with
relatively high emotional expressiveness are more likely to have a reaction to outcomes that are
not expected.
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is a term used to capture one’s awareness of the emotions experienced in
a situation as well as the ability to control reactions to these emotions. This includes awareness
of the emotions experienced by the individual as well as an awareness and sympathy for the
emotions experienced by others. Exhibit 5.7 shows that emotional intelligence (EI) is a
multifaceted concept.
In a marketing context, salespeople with high emotional intelligence are more
effective in closing sales with consumers than are salespeople who are low in emotional
intelligence. Sales companies are increasingly realizing the benefits of employees with high EI.
EI training is becoming more commonplace as marketers attempt to convince consumers to buy
more and to be more satisfied with the things they do buy.
Slide 22
Slide 23
LO6. Define and apply the concepts of schema-based affect and emotional contagion.
Emotion, Meaning, and Schema-Based Affect
Slide 24
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Although emotion and cognition seem different, they are actually quite closely related. This
relationship is seen clearly in the roles that affect, mood, and emotion can play in signaling and
developing meaning.
Semantic Wiring
A consumer’s ability to remember things about brands and products can be explained by using
theories developed around the principles of semantic networks. The active processing and
storage of knowledge is significantly influenced by emotions in several ways.
An emotional effect on memory can be described as relatively superior recall for
information presented with mild affective content compared with similar information presented
in an affectively neutral way. Marketing communications that present product information in a
way that evokes mild levels of emotion tend to be more effective in producing recall than
communications that are affectively neutral.
Mood-Congruent Recall
Mood-congruent recall means that to the extent that a consumer’s mood can be controlled, their
memories and evaluations can be influenced. Music is useful in inducing moods. Consumers in
good moods tend to evaluate products positively compared with consumers in bad moods and
vice versa.
Autobiographical memories are memories of previous meaningful events in one’s life.
Consumers are more likely to recall autobiographical memories characterized by specific moods
when the same mood occurs again in the future. Simply put, moods tend to match memories.
Nostalgia
Nostalgia is characterized by a yearning for the past motivated by the belief that previous times
were somehow more pleasant. Nostalgia can motivate product purchases as consumers attempt to
relive the pleasant feelings of the past. The large number of advertisements including popular
“oldies” songs illustrates attempts at evoking nostalgic feelings.
Slide 25
Schema-Based Affect
Schemas are developed and reinforced through actual experience. A schema-based affect
involves emotions that become stored as part of the meaning for a category or schema and thus
another example of how affect and cognition are wired together. Exhibit 5.10 shows examples of
schema-based affect that can influence consumers’ reactions to consumption experiences.
Negative schema-based emotions of this type can interfere with the consumer’s ability to process
information about the product.
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Slide 26
Slide 27
Q: Ask students to find products designed in rectangular shapes. Do they
prefer the product because of its shape?
A: Answers will vary.
Aesthetic Labor
Aesthetic labor is the effort put forth by employees in carefully managing their appearance as a
requisite for performing their job well. Cosmetic representatives, flight attendants, and fashion
models, for example, perform aesthetic labor.
Slide 28
Self-Conscious Emotions
Self-conscious emotions (pride, embarrassment, guilt, regret, shame, and hope) result from some
evaluation or reflection of one’s own behavior—which can include both actions and failures to
act. Many ads evoke negative self-conscious emotions. The anti-smoking ad below reads, “If this
is how a child feels when they lose you for a minute, just imagine how he’d feel if he lost you for
life.” Powerful words.
Slide 29
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Emotional Contagion
Emotional contagion refers to the extent to which an emotional display by one person influences
the emotional state of a bystander. Consumers who perceive other consumers or employees
surrounding them as happy or sad may experience a change in actual happiness or sadness
themselves.
When service providers maintain an expression signaling a positive affect (service with a
smile), consumers report higher incidences of positive affect themselves. Emotional labor is
performed by service workers who must 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.
Slide 30
VIDEO CLIP
PowerPoint Clip from The Putting Lot
Run time 2:02 minutes
Slide 31
The Putting Lot is a community mini-golf course on a former vacant lot founded with the
intention of sustaining an existing community while helping it to transition towards new
developments. The nine-hole course is designed around themes of urban sustainability. The onesummer project quickly drew attention from local volunteers, interested artists and architects, as
well as press from around the world. The project was developed with the hope of inspiring
discussions of and actions towards urban sustainability.
Ask your students:
1. Why was it so easy, if surprising, for The Putting Lot to find neighborhood volunteers during
the development and building stages?
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14
Answer: People were naturally motivated to contribute to something that would enhance their
community but that was also fun and potentially a learning experience.
2. Why do you think this project received so much “free” word-of-mouth press on such a large
scale?
Answer: Because this project has an emotional connection for many people on many levels, the
general public felt honestly compelled to both share and learn about it.
END OF CHAPTER MATERIAL
ONLINE CASE ANSWERS
Visit www.login.cengage.com to access the online case studies for CB.
1. How do teens create value through coolness of the product?
Answer: Teens create value based on information that they have received from media and
friends. In addition, psychological aspects—such as self-esteem, peer pressure, hormones,
and social experiences—in middle schools are influenced by that which is cool and that
which is not.
2. Teens respond to something “cool,” but “cool” keeps changing. So, if you’re a marketer,
how do you find “cool?”
Answer: Firms utilize various research methods to find information about teens such as
surveying, focus groups, online chat rooms, undercover settings, and web groups. These
forms of research are very difficult compared with the typical research conducted on adults
or children. Companies can also utilize online services, such as Trendhunter.com, that
provide a report of “clusters” showing research conducted through information published in
online magazines. You can visit look.look.com.
3. Teens certainly appear to be a difficult demographic group to get hold of. What is different
about this demographic group (teenagers) compared with other sectors of our society
targeted by marketers?
Answer: Teenagers have become the hot demographic for marketers in the last decade due
to a few salient facts. (1) First, sheer numbers: they are the largest generation of teenagers
ever at 33 million, larger than even their baby boomer parents. (2) Second, they are
undoubtedly the wealthiest generation of teenagers. Last year, for example, they spent
about $100 billion dollars themselves and influenced the spending of another $50 billion by
others. (3) Third, they probably have more discretion over their purchasing decisions than
ever before. (4) Fourth, teenagers are subject to the influence of marketers because they
have few loyalties to brands or companies built up over years and because they have few
real needs. They are able to buy what they want and not what they must.
(5) Finally, despite a lifetime of bombardment, teens are still less inured and more plugged
into marketing messages through the media than any other demographic.
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REVIEW QUESTIONS
(*) Indicates material on prep cards.
1. [LO1] What is consumer motivation?
Answer: Consumer motivations are the inner reasons or driving forces behind human
actions as consumers are driven to address real needs.
2. [LO1] How are needs and motivations related? Give an example from your own recent
experiences as a consumer that illustrates this point.
Answer: Needs provide motivations for actions, as in homeostasis. After a workout, a
consumer is thirsty – a basic survival need. A drink, perhaps a Gatorade, can bring the
consumer’s body back to normal.
3. [LO2] What is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? List each category of needs in order, and
provide an example of products associated with each.
Answer: Perhaps the most popular theory of human motivation in consumer and
organizational behavior is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This theory describes consumers as
addressing a finite set of prioritized needs. The categories of needs are:





Physiological – Need for basic survival (food, drink, shelter)
Safety and security – Need to be secure and protected
Belongingness and love – Need to feel like a member of a family or community
Esteem – Need to be recognized as a person of worth
Self-actualization – Need for personal fulfillment
4. [LO2ETHICS] Can Maslow’s hierarchy of needs be used to offer a possible explanation
as to why some consumers will resort to behaviors such as shoplifting, fraud, or outright
theft?
Answer: Yes. In particular, physiological needs provide very strong motivations, such as a
drug addict seeking another fix. The addict is not concerned with anything other than
satisfying this urge; if he must steal to get it, he most likely will.
5. *[LO2] Explain the difference between hedonic and utilitarian motivation. Provide examples
of each.
Answer: Utilitarian motivation is a desire to acquire products that can be used to
accomplish things. Utilitarian motivation holds much in common with the idea of
maintaining behavior. When a consumer needs gasoline for the car, it stimulates utilitarian
motivation.
Hedonic motivation involves a desire to experience something personally gratifying, and
these behaviors are usually emotionally satisfying as well. The desire to travel for the
experience itself (not for business) is an example.
6. *[LO3] How are emotions and value linked together?
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16
Answer: Emotions are extremely important to consumer behavior and marketing because
consumers react most immediately to their feelings.i Notice that both the word motivation
and the word emotion contain “motion” as a root. The fact that emotions are hard-wired to
behavior has been explained as follows: “[Emotions are] fuels for drives, for all motion,
every performance, and any behavioral act.”ii
7. [LO3] Name four types of consumer appraisals, and provide an example of each from your
own consumer experiences.
Answer: Anticipation, agency, equity, and outcomes are four types of consumer appraisals.
Exhibit 5.4 provides a guide for commenting on student examples.
8. [LO3] Consider the list of products below. Do you think that emotions play a role in
consumption related to these products, and do these emotions influence value?





Buying a new sports car
Going off to college
Visiting the health clinic when ill
Buying life insurance
Drinking a Mountain Dew
Answer: It would be hard to make a case that emotions were not involved in any of these
situations. Even simple things, like drinking a Mountain Dew, create emotions that are
associated with the meaning of the brand. The emotions associated with consumption are
directly correlated to value because, as people seek desirable emotion states and receive
them, they experience value.
9. [LO4] What does PANAS stand for?
Answer: Positive-affect-negative-affect scale
10. [LO4] Construct a set of semantic differentials that measures emotions by using a PAD
approach.
Answer: Although the actual PAD scales can be found in the consumer behavior literature
dealing with shopping and retail atmospherics, students are not likely to search them out.
The key is recognizing that the PAD measures emotion with semantic differentials along
three dimensions. Thus, students should come up with items such as this:
Pleasure dimension


Happy __ __ __ __ __ __ Sad
Satisfied __ __ __ __ __ __ Dissatisfied
Arousal dimension


Sleepy __ __ __ __ __ __ Alert
Interested __ __ __ __ __ __ Bored
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Control dimension


Helpless __ __ __ __ __ __ In control
Submissive __ __ __ __ __ __ Dominating
11. [LO4] Explain what is meant by the phrase “emotions are bipolar.”
Answer: Under this theory, the experience of a positive emotion would rule out the
experience of the opposing negative emotion during the same experience.
12. [LO5] What three individual characteristics influence the way in which consumers react
emotionally to a consumption situation?
Answer: The three characteristics are:



Emotional involvement
Emotional expressiveness
Emotional intelligence
13. [LO5] Ask 3 friends about their social networking behavior. Define flow. Do you think
any are obtaining flow experiences from Facebook or other social networking Internet
activities? Do they show any signs of addiction?
Answer: Flow is a state of extremely high involvement in which a consumer is engrossed
in an activity providing high hedonic value. The consumer loses sense of time passing.
The signs of addiction include: spending more than an hour a day on the activity, ignoring
work, feeling more attached to Facebook friends than real friends, replacing sleep with
Facebook activities, getting nervous at the thought of being separated from Facebook for an
extended time.
14.* [LO5] What advantage do marketers have when dealing with consumers who are highly
expressive emotionally?
Answer: The marketers have the ability to understand the consumer’s true reaction to the
consumption experience. It will be obvious whether the consumer has had either a valuable
experience or a negative experience.
15.
[LO6] What is schema-based affect?
Answer: Schema-based affect is the emotions that become stored as part of the meaning for
a category as illustrated with the car salesman schema in the chapter.
16. [LO6] Have several consumers discuss the terms listed below briefly with you. Describe the
schema-based affect that you feel is associated with each based on your discussions.






Wide Spread Panic
jetBlue
Sam Adams Beer
Walmart
New York Yankees
Tide
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
McDonald’s
Answer: This exercise is intended to help students recognize how meaning and affect are
closely related. In your discussion, have students focus on whether the affect for each
category is positive or negative and how the affect might vary from consumer to consumer
depending on their particular schema.
17. [LO6] What is emotional contagion? Do you think it could affect the schema-based affect
for some type of service provider? Explain.
Answer: Emotional contagion is the idea that emotions are contagious. Consumers who
perceive other consumers or employees in their vicinity as either happy or sad may
experience a corresponding change in actual happiness or sadness themselves. If a
consumer enters an experience with a very negative attitude toward dental hygienists but
the dental hygienist appears to always be in a good mood so that it lifts the consumer’s
mood, the affect associated with this category (dental hygienist) may change.
INTERACTIVE/APPLICATION EXERCISES
18. Obtain student opinions on the following statement: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is
constant across the Earth. The categories are the same everywhere, and consumers
everywhere attempt to pursue these needs in much the same way.
Answer: Although the most prominent category of needs that drive behavior may vary
from place to place, the categories of needs are consistent from person to person. In the
United States, consumers are not driven by basic physical needs as much as consumers in
third-world nations, thus allowing most consumers to put more of their resources as a
consumer toward other categories of needs.
19. [ETHICS] Obtain student opinions on the following statement: It is unethical to design a
consumption environment in a way that significantly alters consumer emotions.
Answer: Because environments often determine emotions, it would be practically
impossible to design an environment that did not alter emotions.
20.* Conduct an interview with at least 10 consumers asking them to respond to the PANAS
scale to rate their current mood. Then, have them evaluate the faculty at your particular
university using a 10-point scale with 1 being “lousy” to 10 being “terrific.” Do you think
there is a relationship between mood and their ratings of faculty?
Answer: The discussion should center around mood congruency and whether the results
show a transfer of mood into the ratings of the professors. In a sense, it illustrates emotion
contagion.
21. Interview two shoppers about a recent experience in which each purchased items totaling
over $200. Have them describe the shopping experience in detail. Keep track of the number
of feelings that they mention. Do you believe emotions played a role in the shopping value
they received from the experience? Explain.
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Answer: This experiential exercise should allow discussion of many aspects of the chapter.
The instructor should focus on the role that emotions play in contributing to either hedonic
or utilitarian value in the shopping experience.
22.
While visiting a grocery or clothing store, try to observe and document evidence of things
from the chapter like emotional contagion or product contamination. Describe the events
and explain how they capture the idea.
Answer: This question allows students to apply concepts. Things like product
contamination should be easy to observe and identify.
GROUP ACTIVITY
This group activity can be done on campus. You may want to give students a half hour to visit a
local coffee shop or walk around campus for this observational study.
Students are placed into small group teams of 35 persons each. Each group is given an
observational assignment to be completed in a short time (anywhere from one half to one hour).
Observational assignments may be based on:
 Gender – e.g., “Compare the behaviors of men shopping alone for groceries with those of
women shopping alone,” or “Compare the behaviors of preadolescent boys shopping with
their parents (or an adult) with those of preadolescent girls.”
 Subject’s age – e.g., “Compare the shopping behaviors of senior citizen couples with
those of young couples,” or “Observe the behaviors of teenage boys and girls shopping
without a parent.”
 Product – e.g., “Observe coffee purchases in convenience stores or coffee shops,” or
“Observe the purchase of impulse items at the point of check out ranging from the
campus bookstore to a local sandwich shop.”
 Any pertinent variable – e.g., Store type or the racial/ethnic/cultural affiliation of the
shopper.
Set a minimum number of observations that each group must collect (5 observations for groups
of three up to 10 observations for groups of five). Stress that the data to be collected is to be
based only upon observation and not upon surveys or other types of interaction.
Set aside one or two class meetings for groups to present and discuss their findings. You might
require groups to write a short paper compiling their results and discussing their implications.
You can also have each group prepare a poster or other visual aid summarizing their results.
Source: Julie M. Pharr, Tennessee Technological University. Used with permission.
CHAPTER VIDEO CASE
To view the video case jetBlue, go to the CB companion website login.cengage.com to select
this video.1
1
From Hoyer & MacInnis. Segment 13 jetBlue from Consumer Behavior, pg. 19-20. Copyright (c) 2010 SouthWestern, a part of Cengage Learning, Inc. Reproduced by permission. www.cengage.com/permissions
©2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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This video describes the case of the jetBlue airline which has been quite successful in the
competitive and ailing airline industry. The airline has striven to cut costs in major ways
(through very efficient operations) in order to provide high levels of customer benefits (i.e.,
leather seats, individual TV sets with 24 channels) at very competitive low prices. The airline
also increased security measures in order to reduce passenger fears of flying. This video is an
excellent example of how to stress certain attributes in order to influence a high involvement
consumer decision. It also illustrates the importance of the customer experience and emotions in
flying.
Ask your students:
1. What are the key consumer factors that influence the decision to fly? How does jetBlue
address these factors?
Answer: The major factors that influence the decision to fly are fares, low costs, quality,
and customer service. jetBlue has a lower operating cost than other airlines. They have used
upgrades, such as leather seats, personal televisions, and new aircrafts, to show dedication
to quality. The new aircrafts are also more fuel efficient and have lower maintenance costs,
especially due to warranties. jetBlue views customer service as being of utmost importance.
It is imperative that they make the flights as comfortable, accommodating and enjoyable as
possible because of the high competitiveness in the industry.
2. How are emotional factors important in this situation? How does jetBlue address these
factors?
Answer: Student responses will vary. After terrorist attacks on September 11, the airline
industry had taken a hard hit. jetBlue emphasizes efficiency and brand new aircrafts. The
low fares of jetBlue also entice consumers who may be less inclined to travel by air.
iO’Shaughnessy,
J. and N.J. O’Shaughnessy (2003). The Marketing Power of Emotions. Osford: Oxford
University Press. Slama, M.E. (2003). “Book Review: Emotions and Life: Perspectives from Psychology,
Biology and Evolution,” Psychology & Marketing, 22 (January), 97-101.
E. (1986). “Amygdala: Emotions, Motivation, and Depressive States,” in Emotion: Theory,
Research, and Experience, R. Plutchik et al., eds. Kluwer Press, New York, p. 302.
iiFonberg,
©2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
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