Tense and energetic arousal routes to consumer attitudes

Arousal is an interesting phenomenon in consumer behavior. Thayer (1978b) suggested the existence of two dimensions of arousal — energetic arousal (energy–sleep) and tense arousal (tension–calmness). Although developed in the 1970s, this model has rarely been adopted in consumer studies about effects of arousal on consumer evaluations such as attitudes. To address potential contributions of the two-dimensional arousal model in consumer research, this dissertation aims at validating the existence of two arousal routes to consumer attitudes. Study 1 was an online survey of consumer experiences with an interactive product (GPS). Results indicated that calmness (along the tense arousal dimension) mediated effects of ergonomic qualities (e.g., controllability) on attitudes, whereas energy (along the energetic arousal dimension) mediated effects of hedonic qualities (e.g., innovativeness) on attitudes. These findings suggest that there exists two arousal routes (tense arousal and energetic arousal) to consumer attitudes and that the tense and energetic routes can be activated by ergonomic and hedonic qualities of products, respectively. In addition, degrees of activation for each arousal route depend on individual differences. Reversal theory proposed that telic-oriented (i.e., planning ahead, arousal avoiding) people are especially sensitive to tense arousal whereas paratelic-oriented (i.e., spontaneous, arousal seeking) people are especially sensitive to energetic arousal. This proposition was generally supported by the results of Study 2 and Study 3, which investigated the persuasiveness of calm versus excited advertisements (of a coffee house and a vacation resort, respectively). Results indicated that effects of advertisements were primarily driven by calmness for more telic-oriented people so that calm advertisements were more persuasive than excited advertisements for this group. For more paratelic-oriented people, the route through energy played a major role in determining the effectiveness of advertisements. This seemed especially true if the energetic arousal was produced by activity engagement, so that excited advertisements that addressed actions were particularly persuasive for this group. Overall, the three studies supported the benefits of separating tense and energetic arousal in consumer studies because the two arousal dimensions related to attitudes in different patterns, were associated with different product features, and worked to different extents according to individual differences in arousal-related orientations