This dissertation consists of two essays on the influence of affect on consumer intentions and behavioral responses. In the first essay, the influence of negative affect on consumer satiation is investigated. In the second essay, the influence of conceptual fluency, a positive affective response of “feeling right” during advertising evaluations, evoked by the structural properties of memory networks, is identified.
In the first essay, how anticipated consumption variety influences consumers’ affective responses to slow satiation in the present is investigated. Prior research has focused on how cognitive appraisals of present variety influence consumers’ satiation rates. However, in addition to cognitively attending to the present, consumers also generate affective information regarding future consumption events (e.g. thinking about dessert while eating an entrée). Results indicate that more anticipated consumption variety reduces the amount of negative affect consumers experience during recurrent consumption, which is found to extend consumers’ present consumption enjoyment (reduced satiation rates). Further, the moderating roles of vice and virtue product perceptions and consumer emotional intelligence are also investigated, providing additional evidence of the proposed affective process mechanism while identifying boundary conditions for the effect.
In the second essay, how the structural nature of semantic memory can produce affective responses, in the form of conceptual fluency, to influence consumers’ product behavioral intentions is investigated. Memory activations, generated by key words in advertising, can provide a temporary boost to the perceived desirability of a given product. However, memories are not activated in isolation. Rather, an entire network of interrelated concepts is activated along with the focal memory through various learned associations. Despite a great deal of knowledge detailing the phenomena of memory spreading activations, research has primarily focused on which memories are connected to each other, rather than on how activated memories are connected to their surrounding networks. This essay identifies consumers’ responses to the betweenness centrality (e.g. providing mediated access to other concepts in memory via the shortest path) of a focal word in advertising, rather than the activation of specific associations, as critical for advertising success.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uky.edu/oai:uknowledge.uky.edu:marketing_etds-1004 |
| Date | 01 January 2015 |
| Creators | Mead, James A |
| Publisher | UKnowledge |
| Source Sets | University of Kentucky |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations--Marketing and Supply Chain |
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