Dimensions and basic emotions

Abstract

Emotions are crucial to explaining consumer behavior. Following an in-depth review of the literature, we identified three types of emotional stimuli affecting consumers: emotions produced by the item being purchased, emotions related to various aspects of the evaluation process, and emotions stemming from factors unrelated to the purchase itself. Previous studies have identified two approaches to analyzing emotions, namely, a categorical approach, which looks at basic emotions, and a dimensional one, which studies the dimensions of the emotions. Although these approaches are thought to be complementary, very few studies have been conducted on the subject, and none have specifically examined it in the context of the tourism industry. We have thus conducted a detailed and empirical study measuring the basic emotions and emotional dimensions elicited by hotels in 841 tourists. We demonstrate the existence of differences in both basic emotions and emotional dimensions among tourists and the additional benefit of using both approaches to study them. The results of this research will facilitate the design of appropriate marketing strategies, thereby helping hospitality managers adapt to the different established tourism segments defined by emotions.