Social Cues-Customer Behavior Relationship: The Mediating Role of Emotions and Cognition

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of social cues in a mall’s shopping environment on customer behavior. Two competing mediation scenarios are assessed: emotion-cognition and cognition-emotion in a stimulus-organism-response (SOR)-based framework. Although the role of social cues in driving customer behavior in shopping contexts is largely addressed in the extant literature, the mechanism of the effect is still under-researched area and this study is an attempt to fill this gap.The conceptual model is validated through a questionnaire survey of 1028 shopping mall customers from three cities in Jordan. Two different conceptual models are tested. The analysis reveals that the cognition-emotion mediated model is more robust in predicting the effect of social cues than emotion-cognition mediated model. The findings indicate that a) social cues have a significant positive effect on customers’ emotion of pleasure; cognition; and behavioral response; and b) only pleasure and cognition mediate the effect of social cues on customers’ behavioral response.Theoretically, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism by which customers’ emotions and cognition mediate the effect of social cues on customer behavior; and practically, it asserts the significance of social cues as a marketing tool.