THE AFFECTIVE STRUCTURE OF CONSUMER SITUATIONS

Mehrabian and Russell argue that approach-avoidance behaviors in physi cal and social environments are determined by pleasure, arousal, and d ominance. However, consumer research has not provided convincing evide nce for the role of all three affective variables, largely because res earchers used ad hoc settings, which failed to provide a theoretically coherent array of test environments. This study's authors used the Be havioral Perspective Model to examine the relationship between the aff ective and behavioral variables. Consumers (N = 561) responded to stim uli describing consumer situations, yielding data on 4,488 cases. The role of pleasure, arousal, and dominance as determinants of consumer b ehavior is demonstrated, and Mehrabian and Russell's finding of an imp ortant interaction between pleasure and arousal is confirmed. The impo rtance of theoretically based research on consumer environments is sub stantiated, and dominance is shown to be a predictable response of con sumers across relatively open (consumer-controllable) and relatively c losed (marketer-controlled) settings.