Effects of Emotions on Consumer Behaviour during Online Service Purchasing

ENTER 2014 Research Track Slide Number 1

Effects of Emotions on ConsumerBehaviour during Online Service Purchasing

Yoshimi Kunieda

Department of Tourism Osaka Seikei College, Osaka, Japan


Agenda

Introduction

HypothesisMethodologyResultsConclusion


Introduction

The purpose of this study is to search for psychological process of consumer cognition and feelings during online shopping for service products and clarify how they influence consumer behaviour.


• …moods, feelings, and emotions are related to nearly all aspects of consumption behavior. This is particularly evident in retail settings (Arnold & Reynolds, 2009).

• … attitudes, decision-making processes, emotions, experience and satisfaction or loyalty are necessary to understand the consumer psychology of tourism, hospitality and leisure (Crouch, Perdue, Timmermans, & Uysal, 2004).


Definitions•high involvement for hotel users who have experience, good knowledge of hotel service, (spend less time to find information on the web)•low involvement; others with less experience.

•External cues; building façade, hotel brands, price and word of mouth. •Internal cues; site location, past experience and employee service.


Hypothesis • H1: In post-purchase, total website viewing time

influences high and low-involvement consumers’ feelings.

• H2: In post-purchase, positive feelings are evoked in the high-involvement consumers, and negative emotion in the low-involvement consumers.

• H3: Positive feelings evoked after purchasing service products online elicit higher satisfaction.


Methodology

• A virtual hotel reservation website was constructed in the ‘SEN’ experimental site, developed by Professor Yamamoto and Associate Professor Hamuro of Kwansei Gakuin University, Graduate School, Japan. 　　


Procedure TR1 = 763 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 TR2 = 760

・ 5-point Likert scale questionnaire on cognition of travel and hotel.・ 8 resort hotels were presented to select 4 desirable hotels, 　　 asked to choose the best for reservation.

2.Selection of resort hotels 2.Selection of resort hotels

4.Question on feelings 4.Question on feelings

5.Selection of city hotels 5.Selection of city hotels

7.Question on feelings 7.Question on feelings

　　Scenario　A Scenario　B

3.Reservation for resort hotel 3.Reservation for resort hotel

6.Reservation for City hotel 6.Reservation for city hotel

1.Questions regarding traveling and hotel reservation 1.Questions regarding traveling and hotel reservation


• After reservation, participants are asked to check how they felt in 5 point scales: ‘Uneasy’ 　○　○　○　○　○　　‘ Safe

‘Annoyed’ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　‘ Pleased’

‘Unpleasant’ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　‘ Pleasant’‘Disappointed’ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　‘ Content’

‘Unhappy’ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　‘ Happy’‘Bored’ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

‘ Excited’ ‘Humiliated’ 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　‘ Dignified’ ‘Dissatisfied’ 　　　　　　　　　　　 ‘ Satisfied’

To measure emotions

For measuring the subjective emotional experience, the Likert method was adopted from psychological scales.


ResultsThe Mean Value of feelings

Positive feelings as happy and pleasant evoked from resort hotel. Content and safety from city hotel booking.

Uneasy-Safe

Annoyed-Pleased

Unpleasant-Pleasant

Disappointed-Content

Unhappy-Happy

Bored-Excited

Humiliated-Dignified

Dissatisfied-Satisfied

Resort hotel 3.32 3.53 3.58 3.49 3.72 3.53 3.32 3.50City hotel 3.63 3.57 3.59 3.69 3.61 3.41 3.43 3.67Resort hotel 3.32 3.55 3.65 3.54 3.75 3.51 3.29 3.52City hotel 3.64 3.55 3.56 3.69 3.59 3.38 3.37 3.65

TR1

TR2


Correlation between feelings and satisfaction

feelings

Uneasy–Safe

Annoyed–Pleased

Unpleasant–Pleasant

Disappointed–Content

Unhappy–Happy

Bored–Excited

Humiliated–Dignified

TR1

resort hotel

.754** .742** .739** .786** .791** .645** .692**

city 　hotel .801** .790** .768** .849** .792** .676** .745**

TR2

resort hotel .744** .790** .769** .817** .808** .744** .711**

cityhotel .750** .746** .745** .821** .756** .695** .709**

‘Happy’ for resort and ‘Content’ for city were strongly related with satisfaction.


The Mean Value of feelingsHigh involvement suggests more positive than others.

The item; preference of hotel was classified into 3 groups; high-, moderate- and low-involvement.


Consumers who spent a shorter time on the site suggested positive feelings.

Web viewing Time in City Hotel


• ANOVA made clear that the high-involvement grourp also used external cues as hotel brand and building façade whereas it was initially thought that only low-involvement used them.

Results using ANOVA

Mea

n va

lue

of B

uild

ing

faca

de

Low high Involvement


Hypothesis verification• H1 ： High-involvement using both external and internal

cues searched for more information in a shorter time than the low-involvement. →Supported.

• H2 ： The high-involvement group also showed more positive feelings than the low-involvement group. → Supported.

• H3 ： After selecting a hotel, positive feelings were evoked in high-involvement consumers for both resort and city hotels. → Supported.


Conclusion• Time consumers spend on the web for searching

service products significantly influence some feelings.• Internal cues play important role to evaluate service

quality but for online service purchasing, external cues are also needed even for high involvement users.

• Positive feelings strongly relate to satisfaction for service shopping online.

Results would be confirmed by another two groups.


Thank　you


Conclusion• Positive emotions evoked after purchasing

were highly related to their satisfaction.

• The high-involvement group also show more positive feelings 　 and use both internal and external cues to search information effectively.


Cuesexternal　cues Hotel　user　 Travel　seeker

building　façade ○ ○

word　of　mouth × ×

image　of　the　hotel × ×

brand ○ ×facilities × ○price × ×

internal　cuesI　value　service ○ ×I　value　employees'　service × ×past　experience ○ ○○ significant＝ × =not　significant


Implications

• Marketers must learn to which segment customers belong and how the website environment causes positive and satisfied feelings.

• For online service products, the cues on which consumers rely for evaluation are identified as crucial.


Low 88 3.11 1.149 .122Moderate 227 3.04 .963 .064

High 425 3.50 1.030 .050Total 740 3.32 1.047 .038Low 88 3.23 1.090 .116

Moderate 227 3.34 .801 .053High 425 3.69 .926 .045Total 740 3.53 .930 .034Low 88 3.27 1.047 .112



Moderate 227 3.52 .778 .052High 425 3.90 .876 .042Total 740 3.72 .908 .033Low 88 3.25 .834 .089

Moderate 227 3.38 .763 .051High 425 3.67 .772 .037Total 740 3.53 .793 .029Low 88 3.11 .903 .096


Moderate 227 3.31 .822 .055High 425 3.67 .941 .046Total 740 3.50 .941 .035

SEpreference for

hotelsDependent

Valuales

Humiliated-Dignified

Dissatisfied-Satisfied

Uneasy-Safe

Annoyed-Pleased

Unpleasant-Pleasant

Disappointed-Content

Unhappy-Happy

Bored-Excited

Frequency Mean SD

Mean　Value　Comparison　 Mean　Value　

High involvement of the preference showed more positive than others.


• Using Principle Components Analysis, three factors were identified: Factor 1, termed Internal Factors-Tangibles includes the following cues: fees, physical facilities, appearance/dress of employees, convenience of location, and available parking. Factor 2, termed Internal Factors-Intangibles includes reputation of the firm, professional quality of employees, and “my own personal experience with other accounting firms.” Factor 3, termed External Factors comprises the opinion of friends/relatives, manner of employees, and word-of-mouth reputation.


• Previous research suggests that service promises can foster and strengthen customer-firm relationships (Bitner 1995; Gwinner, Gremler, and Bitner 1998) due to their attention to specific attributes such as price or delivery time (New York Times 2001), or because of unconditional assurances aimed at increasing customer satisfaction (Broadcasting and Cable 1996). Ostrom and Iacobucci (1998) suggest that service guarantees serve as external cues (just like price or brand reputation) that are used by customers to evaluate service quality and reduce risk.


• Attributes that signal quality have been dichotomized into intrinsic and extrinsic cues (Olson 1977; Olson and Jacoby 1972). Intrinsic cues involve the physical composition of the product. In a beverage, intrinsic cues would include such attributes as flavor, color, texture, and degree of sweetness. Intrinsic attributes cannot be changed without altering the nature of the product itself and are consumed as the product is consumed (Olson 1977; Olson and Jacoby 1972). Extrinsic cues are product-related but not part of the physical product itself. They are, by definition, outside the product. Price, brand name, and level of advertising are examples of extrinsic cues to quality.

• Valarie A. Zeithaml (1988 ） Consumer Perceptions of Price, Quality, and Value: A Means-End Model and Synthesis of Evidence Evidence, Journal of Marketing Vol. 52 (July 1988), 2-22. 2 / Journalo f Marketing, July 1988 .


• The fact that emotions are often unconscious makes the measurement extremely complex(Sørensen 2008). Besides this rather important challenge; the definition and conceptualization of emotions has not been completely clear, e.g. in the case of future oriented emotions (Baumgartner, Pieters and Bagozzi, 2008), which is extremely important for decision-making (Loewenstein and Lerner, 2003)

• Emotions in different forms have been present in hierarchy-of-effect models like AIDA and in advertising literature since 1925 (Strong, 1925). In this type of models affect occurs after processing. This notion was changed after Zajonc (1980) argued that emotions happens prior to cognition and that emotions can function independently of cognition giving rise to two different streams of emotion literature in consumer research. One stream follows Lazarus, and is called the appraisal theories of emotions, according to which emotions need cognitive appraisal, and the other stream follows Zajonc, and these are called the biological oriented theories of emotion. The biological oriented theories of emotions are often focused on arousal.


• In 1982 Hirshman and Holbrook published their groundbreaking article on consumer fantasies, feelings and fun and a second article on hedonic consumption (Holbrook and Hischman 1982, Hirschman and Holbrook 1982), calling for more focus on emotional and experiential aspects of consumption. This initiated a track in consumer research focusing mostly on consumer response to advertising or emotions as a result of consumption. Batra and Ray (1986), Edell and Burke (1987) and Holbrook and Batra (1987) have found emotions to be important mediators of cognition and behavioral response to advertising. Emotions as a result of consumption have been studied by e.g. Holbrook et al (1984) focusing on emotions related to products, and Derbaix and Pham (1991) focusing on emotional experiences associated with different consumption situations e.g. vacation, restaurant visits, shopping and hobby related purchasing. Havlena and Holbrook (1986) make a comparative study of two competing typologies of emotions and assess the comparative reliability and validity of the scales. Westbrook and Oliver (1991) studies patterns of emotional response to product experiences by the interrelationship between consumer emotions and satisfaction judgement, and Mano and Oliver (1993) studies post consumption experiences - evaluation, elicited affect and satisfaction. Also Arnould and Price (1993) studies affective dimensions of consumption. They look at extraordinary experiences in the context of white-water rafting and find that affect, narrative and ritual are important factors in the delivery of extraordinary experiences. They experience that it is difficult for consumers to put words on their expected feelings


• The role of emotions and the character of emotional response are complicated matters. Emotions can assume the function of causes, effects, mediators and moderators (Bagozzi, Gopinath and Nyer, 1999). They are not just positive or negative they can also be mixed, which an important research steam in consumer research at the moment is focused on (Lau-Gesk, 2005, Williams and Aaker, 2002 and Larsen and McGraw, 2001). Also anticipated emotions or anticipatory emotions have been called upon (Bagozzi et al., 2000; Perugini and Bagozzi, 2001; Leone, Perugini and Bagozzi, 2005; Baumgartner, Pieters and Bagozzi, 2008). This was followed up by Baumgartner, Pieters and bagozzi, (2008) on future-oriented emotions, where they stress that the conceptualization of this concept has been unclear since anticipated and anticipatory emotions are different concepts. They build this split conceptualization on a proposal by Loewenstein and Lerner (2003). Anticipatory emotions are according to this conceptualization emotions expected to be experienced in the future if certain events do or do not occur, whereas anticipatory emotions are currently experienced due to the prospect of a future event (Bagozzi, Pieters and Baumgartner, 2008: 685)


• Recent findings in cognitive neuroscience and Neuroeconomics (LeDoux, 1998; Damasio, 2000, 2003; Loewenstein 2000; Mellers and McGraw 2001) have made it clear that emotions play an even larger role in decision making than so far assumed. The idea of rational decision making and emotion and feelings as noise has ultimately been rejected. Decision-making without the influence of emotions is not possible (Damasio, 2000). Sound and rational decision-making depends on prior accurate emotion processing (Bachara and Damasio, 2005: 336) Thus the importance of including emotional aspects in consumer research is even greater than was earlier recognized.


Definition of emotions• Izard (1977), whose emotion scale has been widely applied to consumer research, defines emotions as: • 1. “The experience or conscious feeling of emotion” • 2. “The processes that occurs in the brain and nervous system” • 3. “The observable expressive patterns of emotions (particularly on the face)”

– (Izard, 1977, 4) • New findings in cognitive neuroscience have shed light on emotions, what they are and how they interconnect with other functions such as

feelings and cognition. One of the most common references on emotions and neuroscience in consumer research is Antonio Damasio. • Damasio defines emotions as follows: • “A collection of changes in body and brain system that respond to specific contexts of one’s perceptions, actual or recalled, relative to a

particular object or event.” • (Damasio, 2003: pp) • Emotions and feelings though often used at random are not the same thing (Damasio, 2000, 2003) and mood although similar to background

emotions (Damasio, 2000) are longer lasting. • Damasio defines feelings as: • “The perception of a certain state of the body along with the perception of a certain mode of thinking and of thoughts with certain themes.” • (Damasio, 2003: 86) • Affect, a term often used in consumer research, or affective states covers both emotion and feelings (Damasio, 2003) and is thus a less specific

concept. Hedonism or hedonic is often used in consumer research as an opposite to utilitarian. Hedonic value for example reflects the entertaining and emotional worth of the consumption (Barbin, Dardin and Griffin, 1994). Hedonic is thus also a broader concept than emotions but interrelated with emotions.

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Effects of Emotions on Consumer Behaviour during Online Service Purchasing

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