Every Day Quality of Life: Are Traditional Marketing Models Incomplete?

Abstract

In contrast with traditional cognition-based models of brand choice, neuroscience supports the powerful influence of affective components of decision-making. Every decision that consumers make is influenced by affective factors, sometimes moderated by the cognitive knowledge we have (Damasio, 2000). We do not think consciously about every nuance of every brand we choose – in most purchase situations, we buy simply because we feel, deep in our implicit memories, a stronger emotional “liking” for one brand than another. This form of response is commonly termed “low attention processing” (Heath and Ryder, 2004). Affective inputs into decision-making represent one form of shortcut, or heuristic, that consumers invoke when making routine purchases of low-involvement products. Damasio (1994) has shown that affective response to sensory input is processed instantaneously and irrespective of how much cognitive attention is paid to the input (e.g., a commercial).