4 affective factors affect customers to make purchase choices

Absrtact: Every day we have all kinds of emotions, and these feelings are determined by our body and the social environment we are in. But according to scientific research, these feelings are not as complicated as we think. Recent studies have mentioned

Every day we have all kinds of emotions that come from our bodies and our social environment.

But according to scientific research, these feelings are not as complicated as we think. Recent research has suggested that people's complex feelings are based on four basic emotional elements: joy, sadness, fear/surprise and anger/aversion. With these four kinds of emotional elements as elements, through different ways Leelawadee mixed up, the composition of our daily feelings of the thousands of emotional state.

The following "Emotional Wheel", presented by Robert Plutchik, shows how the underlying emotional elements can be crossed and combined to form different levels of emotion.

In this article, the authors will specifically describe how the brain produces these four emotional elements and how they change our actions.

Happy: the source of sharing

Psychology analyst Donald Winnicott found that the first instinctive response of a baby to a mother's smile was to respond with a smile. This shows that the expression of joy and happiness is the human instinct.

The happy part of the brain is in the left prefrontal cortex, which also produces optimism and resilience. The study of emotional neurobiology in the study of Buddhist monks found that the left prefrontal cortex was particularly active as they meditated into a joyful place.

Besides letting us experience "happy" emotions, it can also be the driving force of our actions. Winnicott, who found the baby smiling, also suggested that "sharing can improve happiness".

Happiness is the main driving force for sharing behavior in social media. The following are the top ten emotions summed up by fractl that promote the spread of "viral content", most of which are related to happiness or at the same level.

The emotion of Fractl's drive to "share" overlaps with the "emotional wheel" above to get the following results:

Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, is also the author of the book, "Communication power: Why they are popular" (Contagious:why things Catch on). He studied nearly 7,000 articles in the New York Times to analyze the characteristics of the most frequently shared articles. His findings also confirm that the more positive things are, the more likely they are to be shared.

Google's Abigail Posner uses "energy Exchange" to describe the driving force of this sharing:

"When we see or make an interesting picture, we send it to others to share this energy and joy with them." Each share contains a shared heart of sharing that allows us to realize that we are living, happy, energetic individuals. Every time you praise or comment on social media, it is also a gift to the original author, an affirmation. But most importantly, the gift of sharing is also the exchange of energy, the process of amplifying the mood of happiness, which is what we instinctively decide. ”

Sadness: The bond of common sense

It may be appropriate to look at sadness as the other side of happiness, because scientific research has found that many parts of the brain that are active when people are sad and happy are coincident, indicating that there is a correlation between the two emotions.

But when it comes to grief, the brain produces special neurological substances, and Paul Zak specifically studies two of them: cortisol (cortisol) and oxytocin (oxytocin).

Zak a study that allowed subjects to watch the story of a young boy with cancer.

In the process of viewing the story, the subjects were detected to release cortisol and oxytocin, known as "stress hormones", which are hormones associated with building emotional connections or synaesthesia. And there is a correlation between the amount of hormones produced and the degree of sadness that people feel.

Zak also suggests that oxytocin not only gives us empathy and emotional resonance, but also makes people more tolerant and trusting. Other studies have shown a significant increase in donations to charitable organizations from experimental groups affected by oxytocin compared with the control group.

This, Zak says, explains why businesses put pictures of children or puppies in toilet paper ads, because it allows our brains to release oxytocin, make it more believable and more likely to build brand trust to increase sales.

Fear/surprise: stimulating dependence

People who are susceptible to anxiety, fear, and depression have increased activity in their right prefrontal cortex, but there is also a part of the emotion that seems more important to fear, which is a small, almond-shaped tissue called the amygdala (amygdala).

The amygdala helps us determine how we should react when confronted with dangerous things, to fight or run away. At the same time fear for marketers, there is another layer of special significance.

A study published by the Journal of Consumer Studies (Journal of Consumer Research) noted that allowing subjects to watch different movies and watch viewers of scary movies is more likely to establish a reliance on a brand than viewers who watch movies that produce a feeling of happiness, sadness, and excitement.

The rationale may be that we need to share (vent) Our emotions when we are afraid, and if no one is around, we can only map this emotion to the items at hand. Fear can inspire a person to build an emotion that is beyond the usual reliance on a particular brand.

The researcher, Lea Dunn, who presided over the study, explained that fear can inspire a group of people who are looking for other kinds of catharsis. For example, watch horror movies, see scary scenes, people will hold a regiment to express fear, but if it is a person, may be through the things at hand to seek solace.

Anger/aversion: making people more stubborn

Anger is caused by the hypothalamus of the human being, along with a series of underlying emotions such as hunger, thirst, pain and sexual gratification.

Anger can trigger other emotions, such as aggression. But according to a study by the University of Wisconsin, anger can have an impact on people's perceptions, making them more extreme and difficult to adapt.

In the experiment, subjects were divided into two groups, both of which were asked to read a paper on the pros and cons of nanotechnology. The article is the same, but a group followed by the neutral evaluation, the other group of evaluation is full of extreme description.

The results showed that in the latter group, readers who felt that nanotechnology did more harm than good were more determined on their views after reading the article, that is, extreme language makes people's ideas more extreme and stubborn. The previous group, after reading the comments, did not have an impact on the views they held.

Summary: Aggressive comments can make people who hold negative opinions more extreme. Just a few personal attacks, can let originally just feel "more harm than good" readers, feel hate can not be the nano technology to destroy.

The power of negative emotions lasts a long time, and it is also a great emotion in promoting the spread of media content. The New York Times study of viral transmission says that some of the negative emotions are actually positively correlated with the spread, and anger is particularly pronounced at this point.

Emotions: One of the factors that affect marketing

The results of the study on the emotional impact of social media?—— perhaps the role of emotion in marketing is greatly underestimated.

In the analysis of the databank of IPA, 1400 successful advertising cases were studied, in which the purely emotional content of the advertisement (31%), than the pure rational type of advertising one-fold (16%), while slightly better than the combination of the two reflected in the performance of advertising.

This is consistent with the current study of the brain: people always feel the first, then think. The processing of emotional information is five times times faster than thinking about the same input information.

Since ancient times, emotional factors have played an important role in the evolution of human beings, such as anger or fear, which is the instinct that drives people to keep safe. This emotion is buried in the deepest depths of human consciousness, although it can produce powerful results, but its primitive nature makes people often forget its existence.

For example: Generac, a standby power plant, conducted a survey to interview users to describe their relationship to the generator by drawing pictures.

Harvard Businessweek commented on the event as follows:

Male users often describe a standby generator as a family-protecting Superman, while women describe the lack of a backup generator as if they were putting themselves at risk in the Titanic. The findings have changed the company's marketing strategy by focusing on advanced technology and now responding to the emotional needs of customers, emphasizing that their products can protect their lives and families at critical moments. The strategy has generac a doubling of sales in two years to $1.2 billion trillion.

Emotional factors are the original driving force that can affect customers to make purchase choices.

In the words of Google Abigail Posner, in marketing we should not underestimate the emotional factors, we should understand the importance of this silent force:

"Understand the emotional appeal and key drivers behind the discovery, viewing, sharing, and creation of online videos, photos and visual content." In a visual network, sharing a video or picture is not just about sharing the content itself, but about sharing the emotional response of the creator of the content. ”