Analysis of Emotions in the Behavior of Service Users

Abstract

In Marketing research there is a broad evidence of the influence of emotions in consumer behavior, mostly focused on the consumption of goods or tangible products. However, to the authors’ knowledge there is little evidence of the emotional impact on the consumption of services. In this context, this thesis aims to analyze the influence of emotions and emotional affect on use and consumption of services. For this purpose, based on the Theory of Positive Asymmetry, the present study examines different types of services through different methodologies such as cluster analysis, muldimensional scaling and Manova test. The major contributions of this study are threefold. In the first place, we provide evidence of the possibility of developing consumers’ cluster analysis based on the emotions elicited during the service use. Secondly, our research shows the difference between traditional clustering and emotional clustering. And in the third place, our study empirically tests the Theory of Positive Asymmetry on services, showing that this theory applies not only to products, but also to services. The thesis consists of three chapters with the same structure, namely abstract, introduction, theoretical background, methodology, and finally results and conclusions.