The impact of facial expressions in consumer purchase decision

• Autor(a) principal: Mendes, Gonçalo Ramos Braz Mergulhão
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/18375
• topic: Facial expressions; Emotions; Incongruency; Consumer neuroscience; Purchase intention; Eye-tracking; Consumer decisions; PLS-SEM; Expressão facial; Emoção; Comportamento do consumidor; Tomada de decisão; Marketing

Facial expressions of emotion cannot be controlled voluntarily, they simply reflect our emotional state. When an individual is lying or hiding something, there might be incongruencies between his speech and facial expressions. Today a few studies have explored if an incongruency in a product advertisement has an impact in the consumer purchase decision. We hypothesize that an incongruency might have a negative impact in the consumer purchase decision, focusing in incongruences between spoked language and facial expressions of emotion. To that purpose, we recorded an advertisement video containing a congruent or incongruent expression. Moreover, to test the impact of the advertiser, three spokespersons were selected: a celebrity, an expert and a general consumer. The advertising shows a spokesperson tasting an orange juice and expressing that it is delicious with a congruent happiness facial expression, or with an incongruent disgust facial expression. Both facial emotions were validated using FaceReader software. In order to test the main hypothesis, we recruited 81 individuals. When visualizing the videos, participants were monitored with eye-tracking technology and after visualization were invited to fill a survey. This strategy allowed to investigate the levels of trust, perceived quality, attention and word-of-mouth intentions. After statistical analysis, a structural equation model using PLS-SEM showed that the congruency has a pivotal effect in purchase decision, as well as in the previously mentioned variables. Therefore, we conclude that an incongruency between spoked and non-spoked language have a negative impact in the consumer decision and opinion about the product.