Place the good after the bad: effects of emotional shifts on consumer memory
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Place the good after the bad: effects of emotional shifts on consumer memory Gianluigi Guido 1 & Marco Pichierri 2 & Giovanni Pino 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017
Abstract Marketing research has a limited understanding about the effects arising from emotional shifts (i.e., the transition from one emotion to another) during the same advertising message. This paper sheds light on this topic through two studies. Study 1 examines whether an advertising message that features a negative-to-positive emotional shift (i.e., a shift from a negative to a positive emotion) generates greater recall of an advertised brand than an advertising message with a neutral-to-positive emotional shift (i.e., a shift from a neutral to a positive emotion) or one with no emotional shift. Study 2 examines whether an advertising message that simulates a buyer-seller encounter—with the seller reproducing a negative-to-positive emotional shift via facial expressions—generates a greater recall of the advertised content than an identical advertisement with no emotional shift. Results confirm that a negative-to-positive shift facilitates the recall of both the brand and the advertised information. Keywords Emotional shifts . Improving sequences . Facial expressions . Brand recall . Information recall
* Gianluigi Guido [email protected] Marco Pichierri [email protected] Giovanni Pino [email protected]
1
Department of Management and Economics, University of Salento, Ecotekne Campus, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
2
Department of Management, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Via Capo di Lucca 34, 40126 Bologna, Italy
Mark Lett
1 Introduction As Shakespeare once said, Ball’s well that ends well^—which is to say, the order of events in everyday life may matter as much as the events themselves. People have a natural preference for Bhappy endings,^ which entails experiencing positive emotions after negative ones. We see this, for instance, in people’s preference to hear bad news before good news (Marshall and Kidd 1981), in their metaphorical offers to Bsave the best for last^ and, in the realm of financial investments, their desire to begin with a loss and end with a gain. Relatedly, it seems that improving sequences may favorably affect memory (Montgomery and Unnava 2009). This explains why fireworks designers end their shows with grand explosions, movies feature exciting finales, and the most remembered soccer matches are those where the winning goal comes at the end. Likewise, in advertising communication, before-and-after ads for diet and fitness products often elicit a negative emotion (e.g., sadness) before a positive one (e.g., happiness). Meanwhile, social research and marketing research have emphasized that emotions exert a significant influence on individuals’ behavior and decision-making processes (Poels and Dewitte 2006) and further, that positive events can appear more positive when preceded by negative events (Olsen and Pracejus 2004). Nevertheless, we know very little ab
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