Promoting a Brand's Emotion Benefits: The Influence of Emotion Categorization Processes on Consumer Evaluations

Abstract

Research in psychology has demonstrated that people have a shared knowledge of emotion categories. Building on this research and our understanding of categorization processes, this article proposes a mechanism by which consumers utilize information about a brand's “emotion benefits” in forming attitudes. The results of 2 experimental studies show that (a) consumers’ processing of a brand's emotion benefit information is consistent with categorization processes such that emotion category congruity effects are large in basic—versus subordinate—level conditions, (b) associating a brand with certain emotions can influence brand and ad attitudes without necessarily eliciting emotions during exposure to advertising, (c) emotion category congruity “works” through attitude-toward-the-ad and emotion benefit beliefs in influencing brand attitudes, and (d) subjective product category knowledge moderates the strength of these effects. Taken together, these results explicate the process by which a knowledge-based consideration of a brand's emotional benefits can influence consumers’ beliefs about the brand and brand attitudes.