Mood States and Consumer Behavior: A Critical Review

Abstract

A conceptual framework is presented that depicts both the mediating role of mood states and their potential importance in consumer behavior. Reviewing findings from the psychological literature indicates that mood states have direct and indirect effects on behavior, evaluation, and recall. The scope and limitations of these effects are addressed, and the implications for consumer behavior in three areas-service encounters, point-of-purchase stimuli, and communications (context and content)-are examined. Finally, the potential feasibility and viability of mood-related approaches to marketing research and practice are discussed.

Sentiment, mood and outbound tourism demand

“…Similar to sentiment, mood within the context of this study -which refers to the emotional state of individuals -is also believed to have an effect on their expenditure patterns (Gardner, 1985). More specifically, evidence from the psychology literature suggests that mood affects the way we process information and make our decisions under uncertainty even when the source of the mood is not related to the decision being made (Lowenstein et al, 2001).…”

The Social Uses of Advertising: An Ethnographic Study of Adolescent Advertising Audiences

“…Previous studies have defined the context of advertising reception as either the sponsoring media or program content in which the ad is located (see, e.g., Gardner 1985;Norris and Colman 1992;Pavelchak, Antil, and Munch 1988;Yi 1990) or the other advertising messages that immediately precede and follow a particular ad (see, e.g., Fowles 1996, p. 91;Pieters and Bijmolt 1997). It is significant that both definitions focus on the semantic context that surrounds the message rather than the social context in which the reader or viewer of the advertising message is located.…”

Heart and Mind in Conflict: the Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making

“…More specifically, as with the articles in the consumer choice literature cited above, the focus of this work is on choice as influenced by task-induced affect (i.e., affective reactions that arise directly from the decision task itself) rather than ambient affect (i.e., affective states that arise from background conditions such as fatigue and mood), which has been the predominant focus of work on the role of affect in decision making (see, e.g., Gardner [1985] and Isen [1997] for reviews of research on ambient affect; see also Yates [1990] for the distinction between task-induced and ambient affect). Second, in contrast to empirical work that has examined the effects of task-induced affect on consumer choice (Garbarino and Edell 1997;Luce 1998;Luce et al 1997), where the focus has been on negative affect arising from the structure or difficulty of the task, the focus of this article is on the effects of positive affect arising from the stimulus (see Fiske and Taylor [1991] for a discussion of the importance of examining both negative and positive affect due to their differential effects on memory, judgment, persuasion, and decision making; in the rest of this article, we use the term "stimulus-induced affect" rather than "task-induced affect" to distinguish our work from previous work).…”