Thursday, September 18, 2008
People are more likely to give things a favourable evaluation when they’re happy and a negative evaluation when they’re sad. A new research has found how our mood influences our choice while buying things.
A team of international researchers has carried out the study and found that consumers in a good mood are likely than the unhappy customers to choose the first item they see, especially if all the choices are more or less the same.
The researchers, led by Cheng Qiu of University of Hong Kong, came to the conclusion after analysing the effects of mood on choices of a number of people by carrying out two related studies.
In the first study, all the participants were first asked to write about either a happy or a sad event in their lives to help establish their mood and then they were given several mango-flavoured desserts.
They found that 69% of happy participants chose the first option they saw, compared to 38.5% of unhappy participants. They also noticed that when happy consumers were asked to withhold judgement until all options were presented, they tended to prefer the last option.
In another study, three dessert options — blueberry, almond, and plum pie — were presented sequentially, and the consumers were explicitly asked to withhold judgement until all options had been presented.
Happy consumers chose the last item 48% of the time, compared to just 26% of unhappy participants. "If consumers are exposed to multiple options that differ only in global aesthetic aspects, they tend to evaluate each option spontaneously at the time they first encounter it," they said.
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