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PART I

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

1.1 INTRODUCTION

This paper predominantly addresses the role of emotional behaviour in marketing and will serve as an umbrella topic throughout the report. Next we explore the gender differences in emotional responses; how do men and women differ in their marketing emotions and assumptions? To concentrate our literature study on specific areas, the theoretical research is split into advertising- and consumption emotions in marketing. The final goal of this paper is to present the reader with a research proposal that further elaborates on the topics discussed from the literature study.

1.2 WHAT IS EMOTION?

Although little consistency can be found in the use of terminology related to emotions, we define emotion as the mental states of readiness that arise from cognitive appraisals from events or one's own thoughts (Bagozzi et al. 1999). Emotion, together with other mental process

ses including mood and attitude, are frequently considered as subsets of the term affect.

There is a thin line between emotions, moods and attitudes regarding their definition and evaluation, making it essential to highlight their differences prior to placing them into context. By convention, a mood is regarded as being longer lasting and lower in intensity than an emotion. Moreover, moods are generally unintentional and global whereas emotions are coupled with action tendencies and typically intentional (Frijda 1993). Attitudes seem to be dichotomous with respect to its comparability with emotion since some authors adopt a narrower view than others. Sometimes, attitudes are measured similarly to emotions (e.g. happy-sad, pleasant-unpleasant, etc.) and on other occasions they are defined as evaluative judgments (measured, e.g., by good-bad reactions) rather than emotional states (Bagozzi et al.).

Elaborating on the definition in the first paragraph, the state of readiness distinctly portrayed by an emotion tends to be more intense than that of moods or attitudes. Bagozzi explains this intensity as the strength of the felt experience, plus the magnitude of physiological response and the extent of bodily expression such as facial displays. Different from moods and attitudes, emotions arise in response to appraisals (an evaluative judgment and interpretation thereof) that is made by someone during or just prior to an event or happening. According to Lazarus (1991) goal relevance and goal congruence are two appraisals that are crucial to emotion formation. In other words, a required condition for an emotional response to an event is that a person has a stake in it and simultaneously judges the event to facilitate this stake. This can occur consciously or unconsciously. Although further in-depth analysis on the exact function of emotion is beyond the scope of this paper, the basic principles of emotions as outlined above will come back throughout the remainder of this report.

1.3 DIFFERENT EMOTIONS BETWEEN GENDERS ON ADVERTISING

In this paper, as the title might reveal, we narrow our story to the area of advertising and the response it evokes among men and women. More precisely, the paper examines the gender differences in responses to advertising with emotional content. The central question often sought for in this area is whether males and females react differently to emotional advertising. Conventional wisdom would suggest that females have more extreme responses to advertising that contains a higher dosage of emotional content. Although self-reports indicate females having more frequent and intense emotional experiences than males, substantial research on gender differences reveal mixed evidence in this area. These differences are often smaller than expected and both genders feel the same intensity of emotions in half of the studies in which they are investigated (Kring and Gordon 1998).

The differences in experience of emotions remaining a controversial point, there is consistent support for the sex differences in level of emotional expression. Broverman (1972) concluded that males are reluctant to disclose intimate feelings and to express emotions that imply weakness, dependency or vulnerability. These systematic discrepancies between the genders can be explained by the fact that the greater desire by males to adjust their emotional displays toward what they believe is appropriate or socially desirable (Fisher and Dube 2005). Confirming this theory is the notion that males express their emotions freely in a private situation because there is no social approval or disapproval.

Important for marketers to keep in mind is that particularly males report a less pleasant viewing experience and a less favorable attitude towards advertisements when a low-agency emotion ad was viewed with another male. Low-agency emotions are contrary to the masculine stereotype. When males are exposed to a high-agency emotion ad, the presence of another person is insignificant with respect to their response. On the contrary, agency is not a component of the feminine stereotype, creating the same responses regardless of a public or private situation.

1.4 TREND EFFECTS OF CONSUMPTION EMOTIONS

Because of the chronological order of events in real life, we categorize the topics in a similar manner. Possibly following an advertisement, consumers are bound to recall previous felt emotions when shopping for goods or enjoying a service. The accumulated judgments or attitudes of these emotions have an effect on the level of satisfaction of a particular product or service prior to the purchase. Inherent to this line of research is the belief that the numerous experiences people have when purchasing a product somehow add up to form retrospective judgments (Dube and Morgan 1996). These judgments are formed due to single instances of emotional states experienced over time and can be highly sensitive to trend effects and biases.

Previous studies show that retrospective global judgments are sensitive to the pattern of change in instances over time; more intense positive (negative) retrospective reports are associated with increasing positive (negative) trends. Do these retro-global judgments of consumption emotions also apply to satisfaction judgments? And is there difference in trend effects between men and women with respect to positive or negative emotions? These queries will be treated and discussed in the second part of this paper perhaps providing us with a possible unexplored research area.

1.5 RELEVANCE OF THE TOPIC(S)

It is well