مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

Emotional experiences comprised of sequentially arising positive and negative emotions are a part of consumer life. A visit to Disneyland, deemed the “happiest place on earth,” more often produces a roller coaster of emotions instead of pure happiness (Sutton, 1992), for example, from the exuberance felt when meeting a favorite Disney character on Main Street to the frustration felt while waiting in long lines. Con- flicting emotions also arise for the ‘happiest milestones’ in life such as when planning weddings (Nelson & Otnes, 2005) and likewise for the types of decisions about engaging in vice behaviors such as drug and alcohol consumption (Fitzsimons, Nunes, & Williams, 2007) or gambling (Cowley, 2008). Positive and negative emotions present themselves for mundane experiences as well, for instance, while watching or listening to commercials (Edell & Burke, 1987; Ursavas & Hesapci-Sanaktekin, 2013). Indeed, consumption experiences are filled with ups and downs.

How do consumers evaluate such conflicting emotional experiences? What are the factors driving their evaluations? These are particularly important questions for marketers who are increasingly seeking to manage and structure consumption experiences for long-term customer relationship management (e.g. Grewal, Levy, & Kumar, 2009). From horror movies to extreme sports such as sky diving (Andrade & Cohen, 2007; Celsi, Rose, & Leigh, 1993), engineering conflicting emotions is at the crux of successful customer experience design (Brakus, Schmitt, & Zarantonello, 2009). Yet, despite their ubiquity, conflicting emotional experiences have received far less attention from researchers than single-valence experiences, with existing work mostly identifying how and when conflicting emotions may be triggered (Brooks, Highhouse, Russell, & Mohr, 2003; Ursavas & Hesapci-Sanaktekin, 2013). Earlier work also demonstrated that conflicting as opposed to single-valenced emotional experiences activate both positive and negative emotion systems in memory (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1997; Davidson, 1993; Larsen, McGraw, & Cacioppo, 2001), positively correlate with higher activity levels in two different locations of the brain (Larsen, Norris, & Cacioppo, 2003), and can produce higher levels of felt discomfort that subsequently influences judgment (Williams & Aaker, 2002; Newby-Clark, McGregor, & Zanna, 2002; Priester & Petty, 1996). Although there has been debate over whether positive and negative emotions can truly be aroused simultaneously (Barrett & BlissMoreau, 2009), there has been unequivocal agreement that the underpinnings of conflicting emotional experiences can be sequential in nature (Russell & Carroll, 1999).

The present research brings to light two different views about consumer evaluations of sequentially arising positive and negative emotions. Drawing on research suggesting that positive emotions help renew the coping resources drained from negative emotions (Linville & Fischer, 1991), a coping view indicates that relatively close (vs. distant) temporal proximity between conflicting emotions should lead to more favorable evaluations (Labroo & Ramanathan, 2007), regardless of sequential ordering of the emotions (i.e. positive-negative or negative-positive; Linville & Fischer, 1991). However, other research on sequential positioning promotes that the most memorable aspect of the experience guides evaluation of sequences (Biswas, Grewal, & Roggeveen, 2010; Biswas, Labrecque, Lehmann, & Markos, 2014).