Emotions and Consumption Behaviour

This stimulating book scrutinizes how emotions function in consumers, from both a psychological and a managerial perspective. It demonstrates how gratitude, happiness, guilt, anger, pride and sadness determine different post-consumption behaviours such as positive and negative word of mouth, repurchase intention and complaint behavior.The emotional side of consumption seems to play an essential role in explaining choices made and actions taken by consumers. Isabella Soscia explores the cognitive antecedents and the action tendencies of happiness and unhappiness and social emotions such as guilt and pride, anger and gratitude are analyzed. The book will equip managers with conceptual tools and managerial guidance either to prevent certain emotions from arising in consumers or to generate desired emotions in consumers and so to inhibit or promote appropriate actions. Using empirical examples, Isabella Soscia demonstrates that different emotions predict specific different types of post-consumption behaviors and that cognitive antecedents specified in the psychology literature elicit them. Emotions and Consumption Behaviour will prove invaluable for consumer behavior scholars and marketing scholars. Students will find the examples and short case-study descriptions that clarify the theoretical content illuminating. As each of the emotions analysed has different managerial implications, marketing managers, and brand and product managers as well as advertising managers will find that this book helps them to design marketing strategy.

Table of Contents:
Contents: Preface 1. Consumer Emotions and Behaviour 2. Happiness and Unhappiness 3. Pride and Sense of Guilt 4. Anger and Gratitude 5. Consumption Emotions and the Determination of Post-consumption Behaviour References Index

About the Author :
Isabella Soscia, SKEMA Business School, France

Review :
’A structured, scientific approach to the study of emotional responses that is of interest to both managers and consumers. For marketing managers, this book proposes a simple method to understand how individual emotions, such as guilt or happiness, influence specific post-purchase behaviors. For consumers, it illustrates the broader implications of emotions that are routinely experienced while choosing, buying, and consuming products and services. Overall, the author deals with the elusive, complex, but highly fascinating subject of emotions and consumer behaviour in a lucid and coherent manner.’ ’Literally and metaphorically, this long-overdue book is full of emotions. While illustrating the role and implications of human emotions on consumption behaviour, the author does it passionately. She comments on the evidence that consumers desire much more than functional utility and material possession of goods. Positive, negative, and mixed emotions are better predictors of the way consumers elaborate meanings of their possessions as well as sounder explanations of the way consumption is used in order to navigate social relations.’