Opening the ‘black box’ of luxury consumers: An application of psychophysiological method

Abstract

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to examine the feasibility of using psychophysiological methods to measure luxury consumers’ emotional processes beyond those captured by self-report measures. Specifically, skin conductance, heart rate, brain wave, and facial expression were used to examine consumers’ emotional reaction to luxury marketing stimuli. On self-report measures, consumers reported negative attitude and lower purchase intention when the brand was marketed to be luxurious. However, self-report measures were unable to capture any change in consumers’ emotions that underlie these negative responses. The psychophysiological methods suggest that consumers’ experience of anger (interest) underlies their negative (positive) responses toward the brand when it was marketed to be luxurious (non-luxurious). These findings demonstrated that psychophysiological methods can provide valuable insights about luxury consumers’ emotional process beyond those captured by self-report measures.