In this paper, we call for a peripheral psychophysiology approach in order to fully unlock the potential of affective neuroscience in retailing and consumer services. We assume that using peripheral psychophysiological measures of embodied cognition and emotion such as facial EMG and skin conductance responses would greatly contribute to a novel understanding of consumers’ judgements, decision-making, and behaviors. To do so, it is necessary to overcome the difficulties formerly encountered in applying psychophysiological methods in marketing in order to contribute to an emerging stream of applied peripheral psychophysiology research. Accordingly, we answer three fundamental questions (What? How? When?). Afterward, we discuss three critical points (perils) researchers should carefully consider when applying peripheral psychophysiology measures in retailing and consumer services research.

Introduction

A large body of experimental evidence documents that emotions and subsequent attitudes are primarily implicit, which means they can occur outside of a consumer’s conscious awareness (Lee et al., 2018). To date, both marketing scholars and neuroscientists have stressed these important limitations of human consciousness and have addressed why marketing researchers should consider implicit affective processes as well (Plassmann et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2018). Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, few studies have embraced the use of neuroscientific models and methods in retailing and consumer services to disentangle implicit and explicit emotional processes at the store. However, we believe that concepts and methods from affective neuroscience can greatly improve our understanding of the nature of emotion in retailing and its effects on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, we submit that the study of emotion in retailing and consumer services should be updated and clarified using psychophysiology. Psychophysiological measures have gained some popularity in the last decade in academic research and business practices (Plassmann et al., 2012, 2015; Agarwal and Dutta, 2015; Boksem and Smidts, 2015; Çakir et al., 2018). The psychophysiological techniques can accurately assess consumer decision-making processes and reactions to environment stimuli, such as the effects of the retail setting environment (e.g., ambient scent, music, and color) on in-store shopper behavior. For instance, psychophysiological measures are shown to be appropriate for predicting the power of future market performance for new products (Baldo et al., 2015), emotional processes for different pricing levels (Somervuori and Ravaja, 2013), advertising effectiveness (Venkatraman et al., 2015; Krampe et al., 2018), and purchase decision (Çakir et al., 2018). Psychophysiological measures have the potential to overcome limits of self-report measures and observable behavioral measures by directly accessing consumers’ mental processes such as emotion, cognition, and the interaction between them (Plassmann et al., 2012; Agarwal and Dutta, 2015).