Interaction between involvement and product consumption emotions in the spanish wine market

Abstract

In the marketing literature about emotions there is scarce research on the relationship betweenthe levels of consumer involvement and consumption elicited emotions. Based on Theory ofHedonic Asymmetry, we address these questions: “How is the relationship between consumerinvolvement and product elicited emotions?”, “Are positive emotions prevailing for highlyinvolved consumers?”, and “are negative emotions more dominant in low involved consumers?”.For this purpose, three different levels of consumer involvement have been considered -low(n=228), medium (n=493) and highly involved consumers (n=601)-. Using MANOVA tests, wedetect a significant effect of level of consumer involvement on the emotions derived fro productconsumption: higher levels of involvement lead to greater positive emotions and higher levelsof satisfaction. However, and contrary to our initial expectations, medium-involved consumersexperience the highest negative emotions, suggesting that consumers should go beyond aninvolvement threshold to develop a negative emotional appraisal and to provoke negativeaffect.