 Do mind and body agree? Unconscious versus conscious arousal in product attitude formationDebora Bettiga, Lucio Lamberti and Giuliano Noci Journal of Business Research, 2017, vol. 75, issue C, 108-117 Abstract: Marketing research addressing the role of arousal in attitude formation and change mostly looks at arousal as a merely conscious emotion. However, a substantial body of research, in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, now offers insights on the implicit, subliminal reactions of individuals to external stimuli, sustaining that unconscious emotions may drive to different attitudinal responses. Following a conceptualization of conscious and unconscious arousal and its influence on product attitude formation, this study provides empirical evidence of the hypothesised relationships through a laboratory experiment on 160 subjects. By employing electrodermal activity, a physiological measure, to assess unconscious arousal and self-reported scales to assess conscious arousal, the study reveals that conscious and unconscious arousal are two independent emotional responses and they influence attitude toward the product differently. The study extends theory on emotions and provides an initial step toward using physiological measures to evaluate consumer emotional response to new products. Keywords: Unconscious arousal; Attitude; Emotion; Product trial; Electrodermal activity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:75:y:2017:i:c:p:108-117 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.02.008 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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