The overestimated role of emotions in marketing

When marketers try to raise brand awareness, build a loyal customer base, and ultimately turn leads into sales for their companies and organizations, it is critical to be able to successfully appeal to consumer emotions.

In fact, marketers try to do their best to appeal to the emotions of consumers, and thus cause the latter to proceed with a specific action.

However, the role that emotions play in this process may be overestimated.

Logic is as important as emotions

Although a large part of consumer decisions may be driven by emotions, consumers are still rational beings.

Therefore, their decisions and actions are determined by logic, as well.

This becomes especially evident during hard economic times, when consumers have to think rationally, and adjust their buying behavior and habits accordingly.

During those times, marketers realize that consumers prioritize their needs in a more realistic way, based on their income and budget.

As a result, there is less impulse buying, which is normally affected by consumer emotions, as they are triggered by marketing campaigns that target those emotions.

Consumers stop being price blind, and start asking for special offers and price discounts, due to their limited budget.

Emotions play a limited role in B2B marketing

Businesses selling to other businesses know firsthand that different rules apply to B2B marketing, as opposed to B2C marketing.

In B2B marketing, customers are represented by business executives who make their purchasing decisions, in order to better serve the interests of their companies.

Normally, emotions shouldn’t have a place in a B2B sale, since each side aims at maximizing the economic benefit that its gets, on pure business grounds.

The only exception could be when there is some form of personal relationship between a buyer and a seller, such as, for example, when they are friends.

In this case, a personal relationship can go beyond a pure business relationship.

As a result, a seller could offer some discount, an a buyer could buy a bigger quantity, for example.

However, unless this type of personal relationship benefits both parties, it is doubtful whether it can work in the long run, since the businesses represented by the buyer and/or the seller may consider it unprofitable and believe that it is against their interests.

Consumers make less impulsive purchases with time

Assuming that impulsive buying is strongly affected by emotions, the fact that consumers make less impulsive purchases with time, as they grow older and/or become more experienced, shows that emotions become less important in their buying decisions.

Therefore, when marketers try to appeal to this type of consumers, they should take this fact into account, and use rational arguments that may appeal to older, and more knowledgeable and experienced consumers, rather than appealing to the latter’s emotions.

Even younger consumers may get bored

Although marketing repetition is crucial, in order to effectively get a marketing message across to the public, consumers may get bored after a certain point.

In case of marketing to children, marketers rely heavily on appealing to children’s emotions.

In general, marketing repetition can be more effectively applied to children than adult consumers.

However, even in this case, an overstimulation of children’s emotions can lead to boredom.

In addition to that, children are not fool.

They will understand it, when a marketer attempts to take advantage of their emotions.

They can compare prices, and thus, they know that a product marketed to them can be cheaper or more expensive than another product.

Therefore, they can act similarly to adults, when it comes to maximizing their economic benefit from a purchase.

As a result, appealing to children’s emotions can have a limited effect, in this case.

Sources and further reading:

Allen Woo explains the importance of emotions in business management

THE EMOTIONAL BUYER – Underestimated and overlooked

The role of emotion in economic behavior

Connecting with Your Customers: The Power of Emotional Marketing