THE VARIETIES OF CONSUMPTION EXPERIENCE

Traditional research on emotional response in consumer behavior has focused on affect or "liking" while downplaying the importance of the entire range of emotions experienced by consumers in their interactions with products and services. While emotional reactions are invariably associated with product consumption, in some cases (e.g., artwork, musical performances, plays, religious services) the emotions or "feelings" resulting from or contained in the experience represent the primary benefits produced by or expected from the product.; Psychological research into the categorization and description of emotional response has followed two distinct paths. The first assumes the existence of a small number (typically eight to ten) of "basic emotions" which serve as building blocks for the entire range of emotional experience, while the second decomposes complex emotions using a small number of "dimensions" (typically three).; The current research employs written descriptions of 149 actual consumption experiences to examine the utility and application of both approaches in the context of consumption experiences. The eight basic emotions listed by Plutchik are compared to the three dimensions derived by Mehrabian and Russell.; Three-dimensional perceptual spaces generated by multiple discriminant analysis indicate that the Mehrabian and Russell scales yield a clearer, more interpretable space. Vectors are inserted into the spaces to measure the correspondence between the two approaches. The Mehrabian and Russell space explained five of the eight Plutchik emotions fairly well, while only the first of the Mehrabian and Russell dimensions (pleasure) is explained well by the Plutchik-based space.; Canonical correlation of the two sets of scales indicates that the Mehrabian and Russell items contain more information about the emotional content of the experiences than do the Plutchik items. This confirms the earlier findings about the superiority of the Mehrabian and Russell approach in the context of real consumption experiences.; The MDA spaces are validated on a separate set of thirty-five "artificial" experiences generated from a content analysis of the 149 real experiences, using each space to predict the alternative set of emotion data. The results of the validation procedure support the findings based on the original data.