The Role of Anticipated Emotions in Purchase Intentions

Abstract

Key personal inputs to decision making reside in expectations about whether a purchase or nonpurchase will make one feel better. Integrating several theoretical approaches, this research proposes a holistic framework formed by four kinds of anticipated emotions (AEs) resulting from the crossing of positive‐ or negative‐valenced emotions with action or inaction. Specifically, this research proposes that consumers under a purchase scenario tend to consider positive and negative AEs of both purchase and nonpurchase in their decisions. Research in this area to date has been sparse and focused mostly on AEs with regard to purchase, but not nonpurchase. The results of four studies confirm that AEs influence purchase decisions in a coordinated way depending on their instrumentality, motivating purchase or nonpurchase. AEs also partially mediate the effect of outcome valence on purchase decisions. Taking the status quo bias as a theoretical basis, this work proposes that the amount of information of favorable and unfavorable outcome messages has a greater influence on AEs motivating purchase than AEs motivating nonpurchase. Finally, future research lines are proposed to expand the use of this fourfold framework and more generally to understand the role of forward‐looking emotions in decision processes.

Perceived Mental Benefit in Electronic Commerce: Development and Validation

“…The hedonic aspect is perceived as the emotional benefit that becomes the antecedents of the attitudes and behaviors of consumers in the context of e-commerce [27,28]. The emotional aspects of buyers, including those related to identifying a need, seeking information, evaluating options, making purchases, and post-purchase satisfaction, can be crucial in different stages of the buying process [29,30]. Therefore, this study concludes that the perceived mental benefit is the benefit of positive psychology, i.e., the emotions that a customer has when shopping online.…”

A New Attitudinal Integral-Model to Explain Green Purchase Intention

“…The intention to purchase also refers to the willingness to express emotions. Emotions play a key role in the desires of consumers and, therefore, in their predisposition to purchase [22]. Thus, although the rationalist approach is part of the equation to explain the human behavior, the predominance of rational mechanisms is surpassed.…”

Anticipated Regret in the Purchase of Secondhand and Counterfeit Product

“…Consumer purchasing decision process is a process that is full of emotion, and emotion is a very strong predictor of consumer behavior in the future (Flavián-Blanco et al, 2011) and generally consumers' goal is to minimize the negative emotions they may experience after making a purchase decision (Bagozzi et al, 2016). Among various negative emotions that consumers may perceive, regret is a very intense emotional response (Di Caprio et al, 2019) so that consumers will tend to avoid regrets and try to regulate their level of regret (Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2006;Pelaez et al, 2019).…”