Examining the nature of the effect of emotions on consumer choice

I explore the nature of the effect of emotions on consumer choice. The issue is both theoretically and managerially important. A considerable body of work in the psychology and consumer behaviour literatures describes the importance of emotions, leading researchers increasingly to pay attention to the role of emotions in judgement and decision-making processes. Despite their demonstrated importance, marketing science largely ignores emotions in choice models for two reasons: measurement difficulties and modelling challenges. The need for studies in this area in practice is confirmed by the Marketing Science Institute which ranked the topic of tier-one importance in its 2014 – 2016, and 2016 - 2018 research priorities.Taking advantage of two data sets collected by Forethought Research, I address two aspects of the modelling challenges. Firstly, I develop empirical models to examine the most appropriate functional form(s) with which to represent the effects of emotions in two different categories: a cognitively dominant category (discount department stores) and a more emotionally charged one (disposable baby diapers). Secondly, I explore the potential impact of emotional incoherence which captures the level of inconsistency among emotional drivers associated with a product or service, and its effect on choice.The thesis makes the following contributions. The first set of analysis demonstrates that a more flexible modelling approach to a linearity assumption can significantly improve model goodness of fit. Moreover, positive and negative emotions have qualitatively different impacts on the likelihood of brand choice. The second study is among the first exploring the impact of emotional incoherence, relative to that of cognitive incoherence on consumer choice. It shows that products may simultaneously elicit high levels of conflicting emotions (i.e., emotional ambivalence incoherence), and this may lower their likelihood of choice. Emotional ambivalence incoherence adds significant explanatory power over and above the level of specific emotions in isolation, and can be as important as the most powerful specific negative emotions. Managerially, the second study suggests that marketing executives should ensure that the emotions that their products and their communications elicit, are internally well-matched