The impact of emotional arousal levels and valence on product evaluations From regulatory goal perspective

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate the moderating roles of emotional arousal levels (elevated vs mild) and emotional valence (positive vs negative) stemming from outcomes of self-regulatory goal pursuit in understanding effectiveness of the product attribute type on product evaluation. Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on the literature on goals, emotions and behaviors, this research advances and tests hypotheses with two studies and an ANOVA. Findings - This study shows that when consumers experience positive emotions stemming from the success of self-regulatory goals (approach vs avoidance), the impact of product attribute type on product evaluations is primarily driven by the emotional arousal levels and that the type of regulatory goals does not matter. In contrast, when consumers experience negative emotions stemming from the failure of goal pursuit, the impact of product attribute type is determined not only by the emotional arousal levels but also by the type of goals. Practical implications - Marketing managers should use appropriate product attributes in advertisements that match with the consumers' emotional arousal levels, emotional valence and regulatory goals by identifying customers' specific emotional state and its source. Originality/value - This study shows that emotional valence moderates the impact of emotional arousal levels on the effectiveness of product attribute types in advertisements, and that the regulatory goals as the source of such emotions matter only under the elevated negative emotions. The major contribution of this research is that to understand the impact of emotions stemming from regulatory goal pursuit on product evaluations, not only emotional valence but also emotional arousal levels and regulatory goals should be taken into consideration.