Le decisioni dei consumatori tra ragione ed emozione: l'effetto alone

Reason and emotion in consumer' preferences: The Halo effect .Consumer research often considers decision making as a process aiming to combine and compare information the attributes characterizing different alternatives. Recent studies suggest that affect and emotion also have an influence on decision making. The aim of the present study is to show that the affect toward different brands could be influenced by specific comparisons and, in turn, have a role in shaping consumers? preferences. In this perspective, the emotion becomes an attribute itself, a sort of halo able to connote products or brands in a distinctive way. In two studies, we investigate the influence of the halo effect on people?s judgments (1) and choices (2). Results show that a positive or negative halo influences people preferences for different brands. The findings of the present study are discussed in details. Moreover, an implication for marketing strategies is that the affective valence people attach to a brand or product may determinate their following preferences when specific contextual comparisons are present. Keywords: Affect, context effect, heuristics and biases,