CONSUMPTION EMOTION AND PERCEIVED RISK - A MACRO-ANALYTIC APPROACH

How is emotion in the consumption experience linked to perceived risk? The author postulates that negative emotions are positively related t o perceived rish and positive emotions are negatively related. The res ults of two macro-analytic studies are reported in this regard. Previo us investigations have used individual consumers as the units of obsew aiion and have therefore limited the generalizability of their results to a few products at best. In contrast, the studies reported in this article attempted to determine the relationships between consumption e motion and perceived rish with products, and services as the units of observation. In study 1, evidence is presented using an aggregative da ta set of 146 products and services that were randomly selected from t he SIC manual. A field survey of 30 actual users was conducted for eac h of the 146 products and services, and 4,380 respondents were surveye d. The mean of the 30 responses was used as the aggregate score for ea ch variable for a particular product. Findings suggest that emotional factors account for a significant and substantial portion of the varia nce in perceived rish even after the effects of other factors (product involvement and perceived differences between alternatives) are taken into account. In study 2, 89 products from the original set were furt her analyzed in a structural model. The endogenous variables of percei ved rish, brand loyalty, and information search were newly measured by a phone survey of 2,670 respondents. It is found that perceived rish mediates the effect of negative emotion and perceived differences on b rand loyalty and information search. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.