In this blog post, I will summarize the main points of the article “The Emotion of Interest and its Relevance to Consumer Psychology and Behaviour” by Billy Sung, Eric J. Vanman, Nicole Hartley and Ian Phau. The article explores how interest, a positive emotion that motivates curiosity and learning, influences consumer behavior and decision making.
The authors define interest as a complex emotion that involves cognitive, affective, physiological and behavioral components. They propose a model of interest that consists of four stages: appraisal, attention, exploration and absorption. Appraisal is the process of evaluating the novelty, complexity and uncertainty of a stimulus. Attention is the allocation of cognitive resources to the stimulus. Exploration is the active search for more information about the stimulus. Absorption is the immersion in the stimulus and the enjoyment of the experience.
The authors review the literature on how interest affects various aspects of consumer psychology and behavior, such as attention, memory, learning, persuasion, choice, satisfaction and loyalty. They highlight the benefits of stimulating interest in consumers, such as increasing engagement, recall, comprehension, attitude change, preference formation and repeat purchase. They also discuss the challenges and limitations of generating interest, such as the need for optimal levels of novelty and complexity, the trade-off between interest and ease of processing, and the potential negative effects of overstimulation and boredom.
The authors conclude by suggesting some practical implications and directions for future research on interest in consumer psychology and behavior. They recommend that marketers should design stimuli that are novel, complex and uncertain enough to elicit interest, but not too difficult or overwhelming to process. They also suggest that marketers should use multiple channels and formats to present stimuli, such as text, images, videos and interactive features. They also advocate for more research on how interest interacts with other emotions, personality traits and situational factors in influencing consumer behavior and decision making.
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