Mood as a Determinant of Postconsumption Product Evaluations: Mood Effects and Their Dependency on the Affective Intensity of the Consumption Experience

Abstract

Can preconsumption mood influence postconsumption evaluations? In this article, we attempt to answer this question; in doing so, we broaden our understanding of both the factors that can influence consumers' evaluations of the consumption experience as well as the role of mood in consumer behavior. The results of an experimental study show that not only can mood influence postconsumption brand attitudes, but that such effects are moderated by the affective intensity of the consumption experience. Mood effects were not observed when consumption evoked strong positive or negative responses. Rather, preconsumption mood influenced brand attitudes only when the consumption experience was relatively neutral in affective intensity.

When Arousal Influences Ad Evaluation and Valence Does Not (and Vice Versa)

“…This coloring effect did not occur, however, when the ad's affective tone was clearly positive. Although mood-congruency effects on evaluation have been considered to be pervasive and robust (e.g., Mayer et al, 1992;Schwarz, 1990), they appear to be sensitive to the affective ambiguity of the target (e.g., Isen & Shalker, 1982;Miniard et al, 1992). This contingency is noteworthy given that many advertisements are not affectively ambiguous.…”

“…For instance, Isen and Shalker (1982) observed that the effect of being in a pleasant mood when assessing the pleasantness of slides of local scenes was stronger when the slides were affectively neutral than when the slides were clearly pleasant or unpleasant. Similarly, Miniard, Bhatla, and Sirdeshmukh (1992) observed that the effect of being in a pleasant or unpleasant mood on participants' rating of the taste of a brand of peanut butter was stronger when the brand's actual taste was ambiguous than when it clearly tasted good or bad. Several mechanisms, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, can explain why moods have less of an effect when the target is affectively unambiguous.…”

“…We elected to rely on music for several reasons. First, music has been repeatedly shown to be an effective manipulation of valence of affective states, both in marketing studies (e.g., Alpert & Alpert, 1990;Kellaris & Kent, 1993;Miniard et al, 1992) and in psychological studies (e.g., Eich & Metcalfe, 1989). Second, compared to most social manipulations of affective states-such as performance feedback, gift giving, and interaction with a confederate-music is relatively content free.…”

“…Several mechanisms, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, can explain why moods have less of an effect when the target is affectively unambiguous. First, the target's affective content may actually erase the preexisting mood state, precluding any mood influence on judgment (Miniard et al, 1992). Second, when the target is affectively unambiguous, the mood state will lose its heuristic (information) value in evaluative judgments (Clore et al, 1994).…”

Mood measurement with Pick-A-Mood: review of current methods and design of a pictorial self-report scale

“…When purchasing products and services, people's preferences are influenced by their momentary mood states (Maier et al, 2012;Quartier, et al, 2009). Moreover, mood affects a person's general purchase willingness (Arnold & Reynolds, 2009) and post-purchase product evaluations (Gorn et al, 1993;Miniard et al, 1992). Secondly, insight into mood can help designers seeking to optimise userproduct interactions, as mood influences which products people choose to interact with (Djamasbi & Strong, 2008;Djamasbi et al, 2010), how they want to interact with these products (Wensveen, 2005), which interaction possibilities they explore (Venkatesh & Speier, 1999), and what kinds of information they process during interaction (Zhang & Jansen, 2009).…”