Consumers Emotional Responses to Functional and Hedonic Products: A Neuroscience Research

The influence of television content on advertisement: a neurophysiological study

Emotional and cognitive reactions to the media context prove impactful on advertising effectiveness. However, research on the topic remains lacking and with a profusion of mixed results regarding the role of the context in enhancing or detracting communication effectiveness. This study explores the media context-advertising relationship, by investigating the influence of television content on advertisement in light of media psychophysiology and grounding on the Halo effect theory. Consumers' responses to different television content and advertisements are assessed. Specifically, consumers' arousal, pleasure, attention, and memorization are measured through brain analysis, heart rate, and skin conductance detection. Self-reported methods complement such analysis, by exploring the values associated with the television content and the advertised brands. Results show that television content influences consumer responses to the advertisement and the values associated with the brands, confirming the existence of a halo effect. Responses differ among television content typologies.

Can visual language convey tactile experience? A study of the tactile compensation effect of visual language for online products

Introduction

There is a common phenomenon of tactile missing in online retail. How to realize consumer tactile compensation is a consensus problem in the field of e-commerce. More and more marketeers and scholars convey their ideas via visual display, but few researches have focused on the tactile compensatory effect of visual language.

Methods

Study 1 collected data from nearly 13,000 online purchases to analyze the impact of haptic cues on sales in real online shopping platforms; Study 2 used a experimental research method to design three experimental groups: hand haptic cue group vs. Object haptic cue group vs. control group (N = 165) to investigate whether the main effect of haptic cues and the dual mediating effect of mental simulation held. Study 3 also adopted a simulated experimental research approach to design a two-factor group: 2 (haptic cue: hand vs. object) × 2 (product type: tactile functional product vs. tactile experiential product) (N = 198). To further explore whether the moderating effect of product type holds based on Study 2.

Results

Therefore, based on the visualization theory and mental simulation theory, and through a second-hand data experiment and two simulated experiments, this study confirmed that visual language did have a compensation effect on tactile missing specifically. Haptic cues in metaphorical visual language can actively compensate for consumers' tactile loss, thus affecting the purchase intention. Mental simulation plays a mediating role in the tactile compensation effect. Product type has a moderating effect, and the use of hand (object) haptic cues in metaphorical visual language in tactile functional products (tactile experiential products) can lead to a more active purchase intention.

Discussion

This study not only enriches the theoretical research on the tactile compensation effect of visual language, but also provides valuable management enlightenment for e-commerce enterprises to improve the effectiveness of online product display and online sensory marketing strategies.

How does price variance among purchase channels affect consumers’ cognitive process when shopping online?

The rise of a flourishing online shopping market has expanded the range of purchase channels available to consumers. Meanwhile, the competition among channels has become increasingly fierce. In this study, the changes in cognitive processes caused by price variance among channels were investigated using event-related potentials. Several daily necessities with low or high price variance between a self-operated business channel and third-party seller channels were chosen as the study objects from a well-known electronic business platform. Thirty participants’ electroencephalograms were collected while they faced higher or lower price variance during the experiment. The results showed that small price variances between the two channels tended to intensify component N2, while big price variances tended to diminish component P3. These results suggest that N2 may reflect consumers’ identification process for price variance and inhibition of a planned response, while P3 may reflect the activation of attention caused by task difficulty due to price variance. These findings indicate that the changes in ERP components N2 and P3 may act as cognitive indices that measure customers’ identification and attention distribution when considering product price variances among online purchase channels.

Exploring the Positive User Experience Possibilities Based on Product Emotion Theory: A Beverage Unmanned Retail Terminal Case

Since the last century, user experience has been regarded as a key concept in the process of product and service design. With the development of positive psychology, the transformation from negative to positive user experience has also taken place in the field of user experience; it emphasizes exploring the future possibility of positive user experience rather than just solving existing problems. Based on the research and analysis of existing literature, this study makes it clear that positive user experience research should be based on the “positive experience,” and arousing a positive emotion is conducive to improving positive user experience. On this basis, the product emotion theory is applied to the analysis process of “positive experience.” Through word frequency screening, thematic analysis, and correlation calculation, the relationship between product stimulus (object, activity, and identity) and user concern (goal, attitude, and standard) based on positive “user comments” is constructed, and positive user experience is understood from multiple levels. Based on the comment score, the positive user experience interval is divided in order to clarify the improvement direction. Finally, taking the “Angel Orange” unmanned retail terminal as an example, this study carried out an empirical analysis. As an exploratory study, this study can provide some insights into the quantitative research process of positive user experience design that evokes positive emotions from a user’s “positive experience” story.

It's a Question of Methods: Computational Factors Influencing the Frontal Asymmetry in Measuring the Emotional Valence

The prefrontal asymmetry (FA) in the alpha band is a well-known physiological correlate of the emotional valence. Several methods for assessing the FA have been proposed in literature, but no studies have compared their effectiveness in a comprehensive way. In this study we first investigated whether the association between FA and valence depends on the computational methods and then, we identified the best one, namely the one giving the highest correlation with the self-reports. The investigated factors were the presence of a normalization factor, the computation in time or frequency domain and the cluster of electrodes used. All the analyses were implemented on the validated DEAP dataset. We found that the number and position of the electrodes do not influence the FA, in contrast with both the power computation method and the normalization. By using a spectrogram-based approach and by adding a normalization factor, a correlation of 0.36 between the FA and the self-reported valence was obtained.

Assessing Consumer Attention and Arousal Using Eye-Tracking Technology in Virtual Retail Environment

This study aims at investigating how consumers experience the retail environment visually, thus establishing a foundation for deeper insights into visual merchandising strategies. Specifically, we experimentally recorded and analyzed the visual attention and emotional arousal of the consumers in a test setting and examined the influence of various elements as well as gender differences in the recorded consumer responses. We conducted an experiment utilizing eye-tracking and virtual reality to analyze visual attention and emotional arousal in response to spatial and design elements in an immersive retail environment. We examined real-time measures of consumer interest and emotional responses during the retail experience. Valid gaze data from 24 male and 22 female participants were used for the analysis of total dwell time (TDT), total fixation count (TFC), and average pupil diameter (APD). The visual attention and emotional arousal of consumers showed different responses to specific areas of interest according to different spatial arrangements in the sales and service areas. This study statistically analyzed gender differences in consumer responses and performed a correlation analysis between visual attention and emotional arousal. Our findings provide insight into improving the design of retail environments for target consumers and contribute to building visual merchandising strategies.

Emotional Contagion: A Brief Overview and Future Directions

Social interactions can trigger emotional contagion between individuals resulting in behavioral synchrony. Emotional contagion can be a very effective and attractive strategy in communication and advertising, and understanding the mechanisms underlying emotional contagion can help marketers to improve their commercial approaches or develop better ones. The purpose of this study is to review and classify the various methodologies and theoretical approaches on emotional contagion, identify the best practices in this domain, and identify ways of gaging and measuring emotional contagion. The study is based on a mini literature review. We identify different mechanisms and approaches to emotional contagion described in the literature. Emotional contagion can be triggered by facial expressions, indirect human interactions, and/or by observing other people's behavior in direct and indirect interactions. Furthermore, emotional contagion can be triggered physiologically or neurologically by synchronizing with the emotional state of others during human interactions. Regarding the assessment and measurement of emotional contagion, we argue that methods based on neuroscience tools are much more accurate and effective than methods based on traditional research approaches. The study identifies guidelines for research on commercial communication through emotional contagion that can be especially interesting for academia and marketing practitioners. The findings are important for field marketers interested in developing new individualized approaches in their commercial strategies and marketing in general. In addition, the study can become the basis of research that further refines and compares the efficacy of the various techniques and tools involved.

Unlocking the Subconscious Consumer Bias: A Survey on the Past, Present, and Future of Hybrid EEG Schemes in Neuromarketing

Fueled by early success stories, the neuromarketing domain advanced rapidly during the last 10 years. As exciting new techniques were being adapted from medical research to the commercial domain, many neuroscientists and marketing practitioners have taken the chance to exploit them so as to uncover the answers of the most important marketing questions. Among the available neuroimaging technologies, electroencephalography (EEG) stands out as the less invasive and most affordable method. While not equally precise as other neuroimaging technologies in terms of spatial resolution, it can capture brain activity almost at the speed of cognition. Hence, EEG constitutes a favorable candidate for recording and subsequently decoding the consumers' brain activity. However, despite its wide use in neuromarketing, it cannot provide the complete picture alone. In order to overcome the limitations imposed by a single monitoring method, researchers focus on more holistic approaches. The exploitation of hybrid EEG schemes (e.g., combining EEG with eye-tracking, electrodermal activity, heart rate, and/or other) is ever growing and will hopefully allow neuromarketing to uncover consumers' behavior. Our survey revolves around last-decade hybrid neuromarketing schemes that involve EEG as the dominant modality. Beyond covering the relevant literature and state-of-the-art findings, we also provide future directions on the field, present the limitations that accompany each of the commonly employed monitoring methods and briefly discuss the omni-present ethical scepticizm related to neuromarketing.