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

Abstract

Over the years, researchers have enriched the postulation that hedonic products generate deeper emotional reactions and feelings in the consumer than functional products. However, recent research empirically proves that hedonic products are more affect-rich only for some consumer segments or for specific consumption contexts. We argue that such inconsistency may derive from the nature of the emotions assessed that is strictly dependent on their empirical measurement and not from the mere existence of emotions themselves. Self-reported methods of evaluating consumer experience, on which prior studies are grounded, only assess conscious emotions the consumer can recognize and report, but not unconscious feelings, happening without individual awareness. The present work takes this challenge by conducting a laboratory experiment in which subjects are exposed to both a utilitarian product and a hedonic product. Physiological measures have been adopted to investigate unconscious emotional responses and self-reported measures to assess conscious emotions toward the products. Specifically, physiological data regarding the subjects’ cardiac activity, respiratory activity, electrodermal activity, and cerebral activity have been collected and complemented with a survey. Results confirm that both functional and hedonic products generate emotional responses in consumers. Further, findings show that when a consumer is exposed to a functional product, the physiological emotional responses are disassociated from the self-reported ones. A diverse pattern is depicted for hedonic products. We suggest an alternative explanation for the apparent lack of affect-rich experiences elicited by functional products and the need to reconsider emotional responses for these products.

Emotional Contagion: A Brief Overview and Future Directions

“…Furthermore, neuroscience research has shown that the type of product, in terms of utilitarian or hedonic, also affects consumers' emotional responses (Bettiga et al, 2020). Since neuroimaging tools help to predict consumer behavior (Smidts et al, 2014;Cascio et al, 2015;Telpaz et al, 2015;Casado-Aranda et al, 2018a,b, 2020Motoki et al, 2020;Jai et al, 2021), future lines of research should consider which environmental factors (such as types of products, types of purchase, etc.)…”

“…Marketing research on emotional contagion has focused on understanding how positive or negative emotions converge in positive or negative consumer behavior (Hennig-Thurau et al, 2006;Dellarocas et al, 2007;Cowley, 2014;Kramer et al, 2014;Fox et al, 2018). However, while marketing and psychology studies usually employ selfreported techniques to understand consumer behavior, the study of emotional contagion is quite suited to drawing on neurophysiological techniques to explain how emotions trigger mind and body arousal (Bell et al, 2018;Verhulst et al, 2019;Bettiga et al, 2020).…”

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

“…Neuroscience research has been employed widely in design fields to understand the responses of consumers, and physiological measures have been used to assess the experiences of consumers with new products (Bettiga et al, 2020 ). Consumer neuroscience can be utilized especially to link consumer choice and decision-making to marketing research (Camerer et al, 2004 ; Pirouz, 2007 ; Plassmann et al, 2012 ; Khushaba et al, 2013 ).…”

“…The general assumption is that biosensing data can provide marketers with information that cannot be obtained from conventional marketing methods (Khushaba et al, 2013 ). Further, research has shown that physiological data describing the emotional responses of consumers to functional products are disassociated from self-reported data (Bettiga et al, 2020 ). Because of the limited technological and analytical capacity, few studies have attempted to empirically analyze how consumer emotion is captured and how they respond to marketing stimuli (Huddleston et al, 2018 ).…”

“…The potential of the eye-tracking method can further reveal gaze information in consumer segmentation. In consumer studies, segmentation represents the different needs of the target market, since age, gender, income, cultural background, and educational levels may be associated with different visual attention and behavior patterns (Dos Santos et al, 2015 ); further, their emotional responses are processed differently by individuals (Bettiga et al, 2020 ). Consequently, the use of eye-tracking as a neuromarketing tool can contribute to measure the individual cognitive and behavioral processes related to vision and find the results of attributes and specific patterns commonly found in segmentation criteria (Dos Santos et al, 2015 ).…”