Why are your customers so emotional?
Why your customers’ emotional state can affect your company’s growth plans
In recent years, businesses have increasingly turned to behavioural science theories to understand their customers’ minds. This new approach to marketing adds a much-needed level of sophistication to strategies that have been lacking for too long.
This article explores the importance of emotional and affective states in decision-making, providing an overview of key concepts in social cognition and how they can be applied to the way you communicate with your customers.
The effect of culture on emotions and their regulation
Emotions profoundly influence our thinking and perception of the world. While the effects of emotions on decision-making were not extensively studied until recently, growing evidence now suggests that our emotional state significantly impacts how we process information. Our affective state when we encounter a situation influences our behaviour. Interestingly, even a negative emotional state can be beneficial, depending on the context. Two systems of thought that explain these differences are holistic (Eastern) and analytic (Western) approaches.
Western Culture: People from Western countries or those raised with Western norms tend to place a high value on positive emotions (Gruber, Mauss, & Tamir, 2011), while negative emotions are often seen as undesirable (Bastian et al., 2012).
Chinese Perspective: Research shows that in Chinese culture, negative outcomes, such as failure, are often used to fuel self-improvement. Conversely, excessive happiness may be viewed negatively, and there is greater control over emotional expression.
Culture shapes how people reflect on their past experiences. In Eastern cultures, individuals may discuss negative experiences more intensely and immerse themselves in those emotions. In more interdependent cultures, people are attuned to negative emotions but can distance themselves effectively. In contrast, individualistic cultures tend to self-immerse, reliving emotions repeatedly.
One key difference between holistic and Western systems of thought is that holistic thinkers are better at keeping their views of the past in context and under control.
The Messenger
Emotions are complex and can change based on context or the person delivering a message. The messenger can have a direct influence on our emotional state. If the messenger shares characteristics and values with us, we are more likely to be influenced by them. Conversely, we might irrationally dismiss information presented by someone we dislike. We also tend to trust experts, believing their messages are more accurate due to their perceived expertise.
Having a balanced view of emotions is important for emotional regulation. For example, people often inflate their past selves to “look good” while downplaying their present selves, as current statements can be checked and held accountable. In other cases, people distance themselves from failures—a concept known as subjective distancing. The further removed one is from failure, the happier they feel, but the memory of that experience also plays a role. Negative thoughts can escalate automatically, while self-distancing reduces aggressive thoughts and angry feelings. However, self-distancing is harder to achieve because it requires more effort.
Our Approach
Understanding the underlying cultural practices is crucial for building a better picture of what motivates your customers.
At Magic Beans, we consider your target audience, their cultural context, and the psychological constructs they are susceptible to. Not only do we consider the broader contexts, we dive into other focussed areas to build a more holistic understanding of your customer. For example, we will think about the shared values that you and your customers have and find ways to bring this to the fore.
This approach allows us to explore how we can increase engagement with your product or service and design our communication and website experiences to make your customers feel comfortable, encouraging a positive affective state. We employ various strategies, such as exploring different types of language to find the most fluent version for your customers or highlighting your core value propositions, which are unique and authoritative, knowing that customers respond well to messages from the right messenger.
We fine-tune our strategies through A/B testing to ensure we find the right recipe for activation. Increasing the number of satisfied customers paves the way for building better retention strategies for our clients.
Mischkowski, D., Kross, E., & Bushman, B.J. (2012). Self-distancing “in the heat of the moment” reduces aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behavior.
Wilson, A.E., & Ross, M. (2001). Temporal Self-Appraisal Theory.
Ip, K.I., Miller, A.L., Karasawa, M., Hirabayashi, H., Kazama, M., Wang, L., Olson, S.L., Kessler, D., & Tardif, T. (2021). Emotion expression and regulation in three cultures: Chinese, Japanese, and American preschoolers’ reactions to disappointment.
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