Customer emotions when making an online purchase decision: Results of neuromarketing experiments

The primary task of marketing is to establish consumers’ emotional connection with a product and awake emotions that motivate them to make a purchase. Deciphering buyers’ emotional state when making a purchase decision allows designing effective and responsive interfaces to market and promote products online. The study aims to identify the emotions acting as predictors of consumer choice when ordering ready-made meals online. Methodologically, the research rests on marketing and neuromarketing theories of studying consumer behavior that make it possible to determine sensory modalities at different stages of the consumer-product interaction. In accordance with the methodology, marketing (cognitive assessment of events) and neuromarketing (experiments using an eye tracker, face reader and computer polygraph) research methods were applied. Data processing was carried out using SPSS 22.0 software, and the following statistical methods were utilized: the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, the nonparametric Mann–Whitney U test and Kruskal–Wallis H test, the parametric Student’s t-test, as well as correlation, variance and regression analysis. The information base includes a series of controlled neuromarketing experiments using an eye tracker, an emotion classifier and a computer polygraph, as well as the authors’ algorithms and calculations. The experimental results demonstrate that virtual shelf placement and on-shelf visibility have no effect on product choice. At the stage of purchase, the prevailing stereotypical relationship to the product is of high importance. The research results show that customer choice is usually accompanied by a change in the emotional valence from disgust, fear and sadness to surprise and enjoyment. Statistically significant differences in the emotional states of men and women when making online choices were found in relation to such emotions as surprise, enjoyment, disgust and anger, and were not found in relation to sadness and fear. Positive mood, if evoked by a particular product, leads to customers preferring this product to broaden the positive experience, whereas negative emotions on the contrary encourage people to choose products incompatible with the current level of emotional arousal.