Emotional Contagion Interfering on Product Evaluation

Informações

Código: MKT2126
Divisão: MKT - Marketing
Tema de Interesse: Tema 01 - Comportamento do Consumidor

Autores

Giuliana Isabella

Resumo

Emotional Contagion is the mechanism that includes mimicking and the automaticsynchronization of facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements withanother person and, consequently, convergence of emotions between the sender andreceiver. Researches of this mechanism conducted usually in the fields of Psychology andMarketing tends to investigate face-to-face interactions. However, the question remains towhat extent, if any, emotional contagion may occur with facial expressions in photos, sincemany purchase situations are brought on by catalogues or websites. This article has thegoal to verify this gap. Emotions have been studied because it is intuitively apparent thatemotions affect the dynamics of the interaction between a salesperson and customers(Verbeke, 1997); in other words, emotions may significantly affect consumer behavior.Therefore, this article also verified whether the facial expressions that transmit emotionscould be associated to product evaluations. To investigate these questions, an experimentwas done with 171 participants, which were exposed to either smiling (positive emotion)or neutral advertising. The differences between the individual advertisements were limitedto the facial expressions of figures in the advertisements (either smiling or neutral/withoutsmiling). One specialist and two students analyzed videotaped records of the participants’responses, and found that participants who saw the positive stimulus mimicked the picture(smiling back) confirming the Emotional Contagion in Photos (the first hypothesis). Thesecond hypothesis was related to whether the positive emotions versus neutral emotionsacquired from the positive facial expression in the photo are associated to a positiveevaluation of the product also displayed in the photo. Evidences show that the ad with apositive expression could change more positively the attitude, the sympathy, the reliability,and the intention of purpose of the participant compared to those who were exposed to theneutral condition. Therefore, the analysis concludes that the facial expressions displayed inphotos produce emotional contagion and may interfere on the evaluation product. On thetheoretical implications, this research brought theories commonly used in psychology toConsumer Behavior, i.e. bringing to the Marketing field question of Emotional Contagion.As managerial implications, companies can use positive facial expressions to influencetheir consumers. In general, the static media (newspapers, magazines, catalogs, billboards,and websites) can benefit from these results. At the end of this article some limitations andfuture research are presented; including for example possibilities to useelectroencephalography (EEG), electromyography, autonomic nervous systemmeasurements, brain imaging, FACS (Facial Action Coding System) and neuromarketingin new researches.

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