Hedonic Experience Research Articles

Hooked on a feeling: The effect of music tempo on attitudes and the mediating role of consumers' affective responses

AbstractWith today's high degree of advertising clutter, marketers might greatly focus on evoking emotion or creating hedonic (e.g., feeling) experiences for consumers in order to improve practice. These strategies minimize the effort needed to process a message and can influence consumers' decisions. In 4 studies, we examine the effects of music tempo on consumers' attitudes toward the brand while further considering the mediating role of evoked feelings. Study 1 and 2 supports that music tempo in commercials influences consumers' affective response to the music in advertising. Study 3 replicated this effect using a controlled experiment and extended the research by demonstrating that tempo also affects general mood states, in addition to feelings evoked by the music. Last, Study 4 demonstrates that need for emotion moderates the role of affect as information. This research contributes to theory in sensory marketing and consumer behavior and offers practical implications to improve marketing practice.

News Consumption and Its Unpleasant Side Effect

Abstract. Following the news is generally understood to be crucial for democracy as it allows citizens to politically participate in an informed manner; yet, one may wonder about the unintended side effects it has for the mental well-being of citizens. With news focusing on the negative and worrisome events in the world, framing that evokes a sense of powerlessness, and lack of entertainment value, this study hypothesizes that news consumption decreases mental well-being via negative hedonic experiences; thereby, we differentiate between hard and soft news. Using a panel survey in combination with latent growth curve modeling (n = 2,767), we demonstrate that the consumption of hard news television programs has a negative effect on the development of mental well-being over time. Soft news consumption, by contrast, has a marginally positive impact on the trend in well-being. This can be explained by the differential topic focus, framing and style of soft news vis-à-vis hard news. Investigating the effects of news consumption on mental well-being provides insight into the impact news exposure has on variables other than the political ones, which definitively are not less societally relevant.

Opinion Seeking in a Social Network-Enabled Product Review Website: A Study of Word-of-Mouth in the Era of Digital Social Networks

This paper challenges a long-held assumption of prior research that online word of mouth (eWOM) is anonymous and impersonal by examining online shoppers’ opinion seeking in the context of using a product review website affording access to a digital social network (SN). Motivated by the need to account for the heterogeneous and idiosyncratic resources available in shoppers’ SN, we distinguish between two opinion-seeking behaviors: (i) exploiting opinions from peers in one’s core network — online friends, and (ii) exploring opinions from peers in one’s extended network — strangers. We draw on social network theory to specify what drives these behaviors and how they influence shoppers’ utilitarian and hedonic experiences during an online product selection task. The results of a free-simulation study conducted with a restaurant review website connected to the Facebook SN platform yielded three key findings. First, exploitation has a stronger beneficial effect on shoppers’ utilitarian and hedonic experiences than exploration. Second, shoppers with high social capital (both structural and relational) have a stronger propensity to engage in exploitation. Third, high social capital does not induce a substitution of exploration with exploitation. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of online shoppers’ opinion seeking in the increasingly prevalent SN-enabled settings.

Erosion in architecture: a tactile design process fostering biophilia

ABSTRACTThis design research explores the physical and poetic relation between architecture and climate by introducing a combined tactile and numerical approach to creation. Through a graduate design studio experience based on a conceptual framework, it is structured in several steps and exploration methods to address the following questions: How does the structure of space regulate environmental forces such as sun and wind to increase the hedonic experience of place? How does material change in response to environmental flows of wind, sun, rain and snow? How can physical model experiences inspire architects and engineers to engage in a more ‘tactile’ reflection on natural phenomena? How can eroded matter create new typologies best adapted to a given environment? The project innovates at three levels: its unique corpus of erosion typologies, its combined analogical and numerical simulation methodology, and the representation of the dynamic nature of erosion into architectural morphology.

Worth the Wait? Leisure Can Be Just as Enjoyable With Work Left Undone

Four studies reveal that (a) people hold a robust intuition about the order of work and leisure and that (b) this intuition is sometimes mistaken. People prefer saving leisure for last, believing they would otherwise be distracted by looming work (Study 1). In controlled experiments, however, although subjects thought their enjoyment would be spoiled when they played a game before rather than after a laborious problem-solving task, got a massage before rather than after midterms, and consumed snacks and watched videos before rather than after a stressful performance, in reality these experiences were similarly enjoyable regardless of order (Studies 2 through 4). This misprediction was indeed mediated by anticipated distraction and was therefore attenuated after people were reminded of the absorbing nature of enjoyable activities (Studies 3 and 4). These studies highlight the power of hedonic experience within the moment of consumption, which has implications for managing (or mismanaging) everyday work and leisure. People might postpone leisure and overwork for future rewards that could be just as pleasurable in the present.

Memory underpinnings of future intentions: Would you like to see the sequel?

In two studies, we investigated the memory underpinnings of future intentions related to past hedonic experiences. Preceding research did not make clear whether the specific memory processes supporting the expression of intentions about the future involve global judgments of the past experience (general affective evaluations formed on-line) or judgments derived from the episodic recollection of the past. Adapting a correlational paradigm previously employed to study future intentions, and applying it to the experience of watching a movie, we comparatively tested the influence of global retrospective evaluations vs. episodic-derived evaluations on future intentions. In Study 1, in which the intentions involved a future experience that was very similar to an overall past one (e.g., seeing the movie sequel), the findings showed that participants relied only on global judgments to form future intentions. In Study 2, in which the global judgment on the past was less diagnostic because the future intentions referred to specific parts of the past experience (e.g., watching a movie centered on a minor character in the previously seen movie), the results indicated that relevant episodic memories provided an essential contribution to the prediction of future intentions. These findings are in agreement with the predictions of the accessibility-diagnosticity framework and they show that global judgments and episodic memories of a past experience contribute differentially to diverse kinds of future intentions.

Factors affecting Taiwanese consumers’ responses toward pop-up retail

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the desired benefits affecting consumer’s attitude and attitude’s consequent influence on behavioral intentions toward pop-up retail, an experiential marketing practice emerging in Taiwan, and to explore the effect of individual differences (consumer innovativeness and materialism) on desired benefits and the moderating effect of cultural values (independent self/interdependent self-construal).Design/methodology/approachA survey containing modified scales, distributed to college students from various majors in ten Taiwanese universities, produced 902 useable responses. Structural equation modeling was employed to investigate the hypothesized relationships.FindingsHedonic benefits and a new utilitarian benefits variable (self-enhancement (SE)) influenced Taiwanese consumers’ attitude toward pop-up retail, and attitude affected patronage intentions. Consumer innovativeness and materialism affected desired benefits. Interdependent self-construal moderated the relationship between materialism and the perceived utilitarian benefit of SE.Research limitations/implicationsRespondents from one narrow, but appropriate, demographic group in one non-western society were examined. Comparison across demographic groups and non-western and western societies would reveal the prevalence of SE associated with pop-up retail acceptance.Practical implicationsPop-up shop design that emphasizes hedonic experience and social status of consumers could lead to successful experiential marketing in Taiwan and perhaps other Chinese societies.Originality/valueThis appears to be the first empirical study in English examining consumer acceptance of pop-up retail in a non-western society. It verifies the importance of the perceived utilitarian benefit (self-enhancement), absent in previous pop-up retail studies, and the impact of individual differences and cultural values on Taiwanese consumer behavior.

The Mesoaccumbens Pathway: A Retrograde Labeling and Single-Cell Axon Tracing Analysis in the Mouse

Neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) that innervate the nucleus accumbens (Acb) constitute the so-called mesoaccumbens system. Increased activity by these neurons is correlated with the expectation and achievement of reward. The mesoaccumbens projection neurons are regarded as a central node in the brain networks that regulate drive and hedonic experience, and their dysregulation is a common pathophysiological step in addictive behaviors as well as major depression. Despite previous anatomical studies that have analyzed the origin of the mesoaccumbens axons within the VTA, regarded as a unit, the exact contributions of the various cytoarchitectural subdivisions of the VTA to this innervation is still unexplored; understanding these contributions would help further our understanding of their precise anatomical organization. With the aim of deciphering the contribution of the various VTA subdivisions to accumbal innervation, the present study has used retrograde tracer microinjections in the Acb to map the location within the various VTA subdivisions of neurons targeting either the shell or core compartments of the Acb in mice. Furthermore, the dopaminergic nature of these projections has also been analyzed using tyrosine-hydroxylase immunohistochemistry. We demonstrate here that small territories of the Acb core and shell are innervated simultaneously by many VTA subdivisions, contributing dopaminergic as well as non-dopaminergic axons to the accumbal innervation. In fact, single VTA subdivisions harbor both dopaminergic and non-dopaminergic neurons that project to the same accumbal territory. The most medial VTA subnuclei, like the caudal linear nucleus, project abundantly to medial aspects of the Acb core, whereas more lateral territories of the Acb are preferentially targeted by neurons located in the parabrachial pigmented and paranigral nuclei. Overall, about half of the mesoaccumbens neurons are putatively dopaminergic in mice. Anterograde single-cell labeling (Sindbis-pal-eGFP vector) of a limited sample of neurons revealed that mesoaccumbens neurons form profuse terminal arborizations to cover large volumes of either the Acb core or shell, and, unlike other VTA projection neuron populations, they do not branch to other striatal or extrastriatal structures. These anatomical observations are consistent with reports of an intense response in many Acb neurons after stimulation of very few VTA cells.

The Wisdom of Crowds in Matters of Taste

Decision makers can often improve the accuracy of their judgments on factual matters by consulting “crowds” of others for their respective opinions. In this article, we investigate whether decision makers could similarly draw on crowds to improve the accuracy of their judgments about their own tastes and hedonic experiences. We present a theoretical model that states that accuracy gains from consulting a crowd’s judgments of taste depend on the interplay among taste discrimination, crowd diversity, and the similarity between the crowd’s preferences and those of the decision maker. The model also delineates the boundary conditions for such “crowd wisdom.” Evidence supporting our hypotheses was found in two laboratory studies in which decision makers made judgments about their own enjoyment of musical pieces and short films. Our findings suggest that although different people may have different preferences and inclinations, their judgments of taste can benefit from the wisdom of crowds.Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2660 .This paper was accepted by Teck-Hua Ho, judgment and decision making.

Organic label's halo effect on sensory and hedonic experience of wine: A pilot study

AbstractThis exploratory pilot study analyzes the influence of organic labeling on the sensory perception of wine, assessing not only overall hedonic rating but specific experiences of different sensory qualities, and addresses the question whether the organic halo effect on hedonic evaluation and purchase intention can be explained by variations in sensory ratings. A sample of 90 consumers took part in a one‐way (organic label vs. control), between‐groups experimental design comprising a wine tasting task and subsequent evaluation of the wine's sensory properties. All individual tasted the same organic wine. In addition to showing that organic labeling increases hedonic evaluation and purchase intention, results provide evidence that sensory perception changes significantly when a wine carries an organic label, compared with the same wine lacking the organic claim. When labeled organic, the same wine was perceived as having a finer, more intense, more fruity and floral aroma, a more intense, pleasurable and fruity flavor, as well as a smoother texture, and better body. Results further showed that the organic halo effect on hedonic evaluation and purchase intention was totally mediated by increases in sensory ratings and perceived healthiness, providing a process explanation for this effect. Additional evidence points to health concerned individuals being less prone to the organic halo effect.Practical applicationsThe finding that consumers not only associate health benefits with organic wine, but that there are expectancy beliefs involved that in addition to increasing hedonic ratings induce a more intense experience of sensory properties, has significant implications for marketers of organic wine and consumer policy aimed at promoting consumption of organic produce. Our findings suggest appealing to these expectations with the use of communicational claims that highlight the sensory experience derived from consuming organic wines. Sensory qualities are particularly relevant for wine, a food product where sensory experiences strongly determine consumer preferences. As our study shows, the positive halo effect that organic labeling has on hedonic evaluation of the wine and purchase intention can be explained by an enhanced sensory experience, particularly taste.

Implication of reward alterations in the expression of negative symptoms in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome: a behavioural and DTI study.

Alterations of the reward system have been proposed as one of the core mechanisms underlying the expression of negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Specifically, deficits in specific reward components and white matter (WM) integrity of the reward system have been highlighted. The putative link between negative symptoms and the hedonic experience, or structural connectivity of the reward system has never been examined in the 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), a condition with increased risk for psychosis. Anticipatory and consummatory dimensions of pleasure were assessed in participants with 22q11DS (N = 54) and healthy controls (N = 55). In patients with 22q11DS, the association between pleasure scores and positive or negative symptoms was investigated. Furthermore, WM integrity of the accumbofrontal tract was quantified using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Associations between DTI measures, pleasure dimensions and negative symptoms were examined. Patients with 22q11DS showed reduced anticipatory and consummatory pleasure compared to controls. Furthermore, anticipatory pleasure scores were negatively correlated to negative and positive symptoms in 22q11DS. WM microstructural changes of the accumbofrontal tract in terms of increased fractional anisotropy and reduced radial anisotropy were also identified in patients. However, no significant correlation between the DTI measures and pleasure dimensions or psychotic symptoms was observed. This study revealed that participants with 22q11DS differed in their experience of pleasure compared to controls. The anticipatory pleasure component appears to be related to negative and positive symptom severity in patients. Alterations of WM integrity of the accumbofrontal tract seem to be related to myelination abnormalities in 22q11DS patients.

Tourist Innovation in Air Travel

This essay explores the recent phenomenon associated with tourists’ adaptability to new services driven by technologies and proposes the concept of tourist innovation as the theoretical underpinnings describing tourists’ adaptability to novel services. To glean the underlying concept of tourist innovation, a series of in-depth personal interviews are deployed. An online survey containing 40 indicators representing the innovation dimensions is distributed that gathers 524 useable responses from air travelers. In the data analysis, a parsimonious model derived from a confirmatory factor analysis validates a four-dimensional solution: (1) novelty seeking, (2) vigilance, (3) hedonic experience seeking, and (4) social distinctiveness. This scale is explained by 10-item tourist innovation measurement, wherein the validity of the resultant scale is achieved.

Mental Resources Increase Preference for Dissimilar Experiences

AbstractAfter having a utilitarian experience, consumers may prefer to have another utilitarian experience or a hedonic experience. Similarly, after having a hedonic experience, consumers may prefer to have another hedonic experience or a utilitarian experience. We propose that the cognitive processes involved in analyzing the benefits of an experience that differs on the hedonic-utilitarian dimension require mental resources. As a result, after having an initial experience, consumers who have (vs. do not have) a high level of mental resources are better able to identify the benefits of a dissimilar experience and show higher preference for this experience. This suggests that an initial utilitarian experience will lead to preference for a hedonic experience when consumers have a high level of mental resources available, but a utilitarian experience when they do not. These findings have implications for how consumers combine multiple experiences, seek pleasure, and exert self-control.

The Impacts of Website Characteristics and Customer Participation on Citizenship Behaviors: The Mediating Role of Co-Creation Experience in Virtual Brand Communities

More and more enterprises organize co-creation activities in virtual brand community to allow customers to participate in new products or new service development process. Involved in those activities, customers obtain experience value, which can make them have sense of achievement. Does this co-creation experience promote the formation of loyalty, such as customer citizenship behaviors? Dowebsite characteristics influence the co-creation experience? The study examines the relationship between co-creation experience to citizenship behaviors and the impact of website characteristics as well as customer participation to co-creation experience. Based previous research, the study builds structural equation model and conducts empirical analysis. The results show that the affection-relevant clues of the site characteristics and customer participation have a positive impact on three dimensions of the experience, and the task-relevant clues have a positive influence on the hedonic experience and social experience. The two dimensions of co-creation experience have a significant positive impact on citizenship behaviors and have a mediating effect.

Appealing to Goodwill or YOLO-Promoting Conservation Volunteering to Millennials

Volunteer travel opportunities are more plentiful than ever and are now offered worldwide, with conservation projects being an increasingly popular choice. Some of the emerging questions in this field are concerned with the effective communication of these opportunities to young people. One theory that could guide the creation of these persuasive campaigns for conservation volunteering is regulatory focus theory. By adopting this theory, we reveal yet another possibility for understanding motivations of conservation volunteers. Results of the experiment suggest promotion messages are better received (more persuasive) because they induce expectations in line with general view of conservation volunteering as a hedonic experience. Moreover, this study is the first one of its kind to show this important effect of environmental attitudes on individuals’ responses to promotional messages about conservation volunteering travel.

Experiential wellbeing data from the American Time Use Survey: Comparisons with other methods and analytic illustrations with age and income.

There has been a recent upsurge of interest in self-reported measures of wellbeing by official statisticians and by researchers in the social sciences. This paper considers data from a wellbeing supplement to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which parsed the previous day into episodes. Respondents provided ratings of five experiential wellbeing adjectives (happiness, stress, tiredness, sadness, and pain) for each of three randomly selected episodes. Because the ATUS Well-being module has not received very much attention, in this paper we provide the reader with details about the features of these data and our approach to analyzing the data (e.g., weighting considerations), and then illustrate the applicability of these data to current issues. Specifically, we examine the association of age and income with all of the experiential wellbeing adjective in the ATUS. Results from the ATUS wellbeing module were broadly consistent with earlier findings on age, but did not confirm all earlier findings between income and wellbeing. We conclude that the ATUS, with its measurement of time use, specific activities, and hedonic experience in a nationally representative survey, offers a unique opportunity to incorporate time use into the burgeoning field of wellbeing research.

Examining the effect of experiential marketing on behavioral intentions in a festival with a specific sport event

ABSTRACTResearch question: Participation in sport events is a significant aspect of experience. So far very few analyses exist that shed light on the kind of experiences that satisfy participants within the context of sport events. Using an experiential marketing approach, a behavioral model was tested in which perceived experiences and attitudes were proposed to interact with satisfaction to predict behavioral intentions of participants in festival with a specific sport event.Research methods: The proposed model was tested by path analysis. The sample setting of this study was Dragon Fest, which is held in Turkey’s different cities. Data for the pilot study were collected from 358 Dragon Fest participants in 2013, while a different sample of 490 participants were included in the main study for the path analysis.Results and findings: The current study verified the value of incorporating an experiential approach into sport event modeling. The relative importance of hedonic and utilitarian attitudes on sport event evaluation decisions was also presented. This study is unique in considering the utility of both hedonic and utilitarian attitudes and 4E experiences in a sport event context.Implications: Sport event organizers should design their event programs to facilitate experiencing different types of experiences with regard to senses of feeling (entertainment), learning (education), being (esthetic), and doing (escapist). This may be a convenient tool for sport and leisure-marketing efforts because the more experience dimensions an event incorporates the more individuals become satisfied and repeat attendance behavior in the future.

“Smooth operator”: Music modulates the perceived creaminess, sweetness, and bitterness of chocolate

There has been a recent growth of interest in determining whether sound (specifically music and soundscapes) can enhance not only the basic taste attributes associated with food and beverage items (such as sweetness, bitterness, sourness, etc.), but also other important components of the tasting experience, such as, for instance, crunchiness, creaminess, and/or carbonation. In the present study, participants evaluated the perceived creaminess of chocolate. Two contrasting soundtracks were produced with such texture-correspondences in mind, and validated by means of a pre-test. The participants tasted the same chocolate twice (without knowing that the chocolates were identical), each time listening to one of the soundtracks. The ‘creamy’ soundtrack enhanced the perceived creaminess and sweetness of the chocolates, as compared to the ratings given while listening to the ‘rough’ soundtrack. Moreover, while the participants preferred the creamy soundtrack, this difference did not appear to affect their overall enjoyment of the chocolates. Interestingly, and in contrast with previous similar studies, these results demonstrate that in certain cases, sounds can have a perceptual effect on gustatory food attributes without necessarily altering the hedonic experience.

The Halo Effect of Product Color Lightness on Hedonic Food Consumption

AbstractThe authors present evidence that light-colored hedonic foods, that is, foods generally considered to be vices and relatively unhealthy, are consumed in greater quantity than the same foods that are darker in color. Greater consumption was demonstrated for lighter-colored chocolate candies and pudding (vs. darker) across a variety of colors. This halo effect of color lightness arises for vice foods because they are consumed for the hedonic experience itself; indeed, the present results indicated that greater consumption was driven by an increased pleasurable experience in the form of a more favorable in-the-moment emotional response and higher taste evaluations. By contrast, the halo effect of color lightness was attenuated for healthy, often called virtue, foods that are consumed for more utilitarian consequences. Findings have practical implications for consumer welfare by contributing to an understanding of what may drive overconsumption of high-calorie foods and for marketers interested in enc...

The Effect of Secure Attachment State and Infant Facial Expressions on Childless Adults' Parental Motivation.

This study examined the association between infant facial expressions and parental motivation as well as the interaction between attachment state and expressions. Two-hundred eighteen childless adults (Mage = 19.22, 118 males, 100 females) were recruited. Participants completed the Chinese version of the State Adult Attachment Measure and the E-prime test, which comprised three components (a) liking, the specific hedonic experience in reaction to laughing, neutral, and crying infant faces; (b) representational responding, actively seeking infant faces with specific expressions; and (c) evoked responding, actively retaining images of three different infant facial expressions. While the first component refers to the “liking” of infants, the second and third components entail the “wanting” of an infant. Random intercepts multilevel models with emotion nested within participants revealed a significant interaction between secure attachment state and emotion on both liking and representational response. A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to examine the unique contributions of secure attachment state. Findings demonstrated that, after controlling for sex, anxious, and avoidant, secure attachment state positively predicted parental motivations (liking and wanting) in the neutral and crying conditions, but not the laughing condition. These findings demonstrate the significant role of secure attachment state in parental motivation, specifically when infants display uncertain and negative emotions.