Understanding How Culture Influences Emotions in Consumer Decision Making

The present research contributes to a limited researched area in consumer research focusing on culture and emotion. Little is known about how culture influence emotions in consumer decision making but there is an emerging interest in deepening the understanding of this. Review of previous studies reveal that culture shapes how consumers ideally want to feel, and that this in turn influences preferences and choice, which is guided by anticipated emotions. Empirical results confirm that some emotions are preferred more than others and that studying discrete emotions may be important when trying to understand how other cultural dimensions, than those traditionally studied (individualism vs. collectivism) in relation to consumers’ behavior, influence emotions. It is confirmed that indeed also Danes as other Western cultures prefer high arousal positive emotions over low arousal positive emotions, but it is also revealed that it could be crucial when studying the influence of culture on emotions in decision-making to distinguish between more than high and low arousal positive and negative emotions and additionally to allow for different levels of e.g. high arousal positive emotions. This could reveal if more extreme emotional experiences are preferred over more moderately arousing emotional experiences or wise-versa when comparing consumers’ preferences within western cultures. The same could be the case with low arousal positive emotions within e.g. eastern cultures. This kind of information could be of high importance to companies in todays internationalized world when developing products and offering to consumers.