Effect of emotional marketing: Attitude formation in Indian consumers

Abstract

As Marketing continues to chart new boundaries, companies have moved from marketing attributes to marketing emotions. As seen from the Consumer Based Brand Equity model Brand resonance can be achieved through consumer judgment- based on attributes of the product or consumer feelings- based on reactions generated by the product. With the number of marketing campaigns in contemporary India moving towards an emotional bent increasing- it is important to ask if this is a herd phenomenon or if really the attitude and hence buying behavior of consumers is affected by marketing to their hearts rather than their minds. The objective of this study is to understand the effect of advertisements based on emotions (especially family sentiment) rather than attributes/Ad characteristics on attitude formation and buying behavior of consumers in the Indian context. This is because the Indian psyche and society are unique from the western culture in many ways. The challenge is to isolate the effects of the judgments on the ad and its characteristics and the effects it has on the attitude developed towards a brand. The earlier schools of thought contended that attitude formation is mainly linked to the thoughts of the consumer regarding the ad and the brand. They did not take into the consideration that emotion as a separate and significant impact on the attitude formation. The area of emotional marketing has been researched worldwide in different contexts. The aim of this study is to identify the veracity of the claims of emotional marketing in the Indian context. Apart from theoretical research and hypothesis development the study proposes to undertake ‘causal research’ to experimentally validate the same. Though the final outcome does matter the objective of the study is to not only find an answer to the overarching question of the effectiveness of emotional marketing in the Indian context but also to find the best method to do the same. The following are the various objectives which need to be met to first develop a sound process for the causal research: * Identify Experimental design to minimize the main and interaction effects which would confound our data collection. Identify attitude constructs to use as the basis for measuring change in attitude in consumers. *Identify the best combination of emotions to judge the stimuli based on previous research papers. *Identify the best treatment options for conducting the research- considering the fact that there are many limitations in the Indian context. * Identify the ideal sample set to perform the survey to maintain internal and external validity. * Utilize the attitude and emotional constructs from secondary research to develop the testing tool for this research Using the above methodology for constructing the tests, the causal research will provide data to perform quantitative analysis to prove the hypotheses which are based on non- Indian researches.