Mood Influences Decisions to Purchase High-Technology Devices

Abstract

The paper presents a study of consumer decisions made by people in different emotional states. According to the existing data, mood influences the mechanisms of information processing and the type of decisions made. We hypothesized that the characteristics people refer to when they compare different models of tablet personal computers depend on their mood. Decision-making was studied by means of evaluation by consumers of importance of different attributes of goods in the process of making a purchase. The mood was induced by viewing animation fragments. The sample of the main study included 64 respondents (40 males and 24 females, mean age 26.2 years). The respondents were shown either a funny or a sad fragment from an animated cartoon and were asked to evaluate the extent to which different parameters of a tablet personal computer influence their purchase decision. The results indicated that the respondents in negative mood were more inclined to refer to characteristics associated with equipment reliability and stable performance, as well as service options and price, so that they ended up preferring cheaper and simple models of high quality. In contrast, respondents in positive mood ascribed higher importance to the equipment design, extra features, and to the opinion of others. These findings show that in a high-technology device purchase setting emotional states influence the preference for positive or negative information, the strategies of information processing, and the willingness to take risks.