Social Mixer 2024 Singapore
marketing interactive Content360 Singapore 2024 Content360 Singapore 2024
Study: Detaching from emotions can help customers make more practical purchases

Study: Detaching from emotions can help customers make more practical purchases

share on

Impulse spending could lead to buying unnecessary products or services. While some customers tend to indulge in a retail therapy, a study has shown that how customers process emotions can affect their buying intention. 

The study, conducted by the School of Business at Hong Kong Baptist University, explains how the act of thinking of emotions like a person (anthropomorphising) can affect consumers. For example, When a customer anthropomorphises sadness, they can experience it less intensely. That is, thinking of sadness as a person could help customer feel more detached from it â€” this may make anthropomorphising a viable strategy for alleviating sadness.

By reducing the intensity of sadness anthropomorphically before shopping, customers can increase self-control, meaning that they can have a better chance to choose a more practical purchase over something excessive or unnecessary.

Anthropomorphic thinking not only impacts sadness, it can also dilute happiness. Happiness can overwhelm and lead to rash decisions, so some customers may want to take a step back and calm down. They can feel more detached from happiness when it’s anthropomorphised as an independent character.

The study suggested that for marketers, they need to consider how the emotions associated with their products and customer journey may be anthropomorphised.


Related articles

PRHK Viewpoints: Get emotional

UK agency Smyle rolls out emotion analytics for physical and digital events

share on

Follow us on our Telegram channel for the latest updates in the marketing and advertising scene.
Follow

Free newsletter

Get the daily lowdown on Asia's top marketing stories.

We break down the big and messy topics of the day so you're updated on the most important developments in Asia's marketing development – for free.

subscribe now open in new window