Consumer Happiness: Multiple Perspectives

The objective of this chapter is to understand happiness and identify the factors that make consumers happy. The literature review examined studies on the happiness of different parts of the world in the last 20 years. The research method was the literature review, and the approach was a theoretical research study. The main findings of the chapter are presented: Happiness has many definitions from ancient Greeks like Aristotle who considered happiness to be the cornerstone of a good life, a life well-lived. During the last two decades, various definitions of happiness have emerged. In this context, recent studies have found that there are four main activities that can make happy humans: (1) physical activity, (2) social experiences, (3) tourism, and (4) altruism. However, the concept of happiness can vary according to culture. For example, Americans define happiness in terms of pleasure whereas Asian culture in terms of marital status and standard of living. The chapter examines happiness approaches and highlights the special case of Latin America, to illustrate, it was measure subjective well-being and live satisfaction in a Peruvian sample.

The second chapter explores happiness from a cross-cultural perspective. Worldwide measures indicate huge differences in happiness between societies. For instance, the 2019 World Happiness Report (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2019) ranks Finland, Sweden, and Norway to be the happier countries, while other countries like South Sudan and Afghanistan are at the bottom of the list. On the other hand, the 2019 Global Emotions Report shows that Latin American countries lead in the positive experiences ranking. The chapter examines a handful of perspectives that explain cultural variation in happiness. One perspective quantifies key variables like GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, perceptions of corruption and generosity. Another perspective is grounded on the fulfillment of psychological needs like learning, autonomy, using one’s skills, respect, and count with others. Nevertheless, and despite the efforts to measure worldwide happiness, there is an unexplained happiness factor that is recognized by researchers and makes a difference in perception of happiness among countries with similar socioeconomic conditions. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions provide a broader cross-cultural frame to attend the unexplained factor of happiness. Members of collective society define themselves through the group they belong, in contrast, within the individualistic society the person is oriented around the self, as an independent being. This might explain why a factor like the freedom to life choices might gave a greater impact on happiness in an individualistic society and social support is more important in a collective society. Finally, the chapter explains the importance of addressing cultural variations on happiness perception in business decisions.

This chapter focuses on the analysis of the impact of new technologies on happiness. Traditionally, studies on the impact of technology on subjective well-being have been carried out by philosophers or thinkers and have generally been relatively negative. In this chapter, a pragmatic approach is adopted. It starts from accepting that technology offers tools that can have positive or negative effects on the happiness of individuals, depending largely on how the technology is used. As regards the new digital technology, the analysis takes as a central point the study of the impact on happiness of social networks and the Internet. In this sense, it is considered that although social networks can have a negative impact on the subjective well-being of individuals, in general their impact is positive due in large part to the possibilities that connectivity opens up. It is also argued that precisely the positive effect of social networks on happiness is one of the factors that contribute to explaining the impressive success of social networks. Social networks offer users something they strongly want, communicate and stay in touch with family and friends. This work closes with the analysis of the impact of a specific social network, Facebook, on the subjective well-being of individuals.

When it comes to happiness and satisfaction, consumer socioeconomic status (SES) has an important moderating role. In this chapter, we outline in which way SES intervenes in shaping consumer preferences and consumer happiness. When considering consumer preferences, low socioeconomic status has been shown to impact dietary patterns, such as consumption of fruits and vegetables, high caloric food, sugar-sweetened beverages, as well as consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Studies also show that low SES consumers tend to engage in purchases of various status-signaling goods. Socioeconomic status has also been shown to intervene in delineating happiness for experiential and material goods, consumer loyalty behavior, and consumer happiness with food consumption. We discuss the factors responsible for these relationships.

The brain has a very superior system, and there are some complex structures which are still undiscovered. The subconscious is one of these unclear features. The subconscious unconsciously places the stimuli in the environment into the mind with the help of sensory organs and processes these pieces of information accumulated there. It manages and directs behavior with images and messages. Although they are felt consciously, the center of emotions is actually subconscious. Thus, the individual involuntarily realizes her or his way of life, relationships with other people and many other factors thanks to her or his subconscious. Consumption behaviors are among these involuntary behaviors. Brand preference, brand loyalty, brand awareness, purchase intention and behavior are affected by these subliminal messages. Hence, companies have endeavored to place subliminal messages that are specially designed and coded below the perception limit into the subconscious of their targeted consumers by using five senses. They bring consumers together with the subliminal messages by preparing psychological, sociological and neurological sub-grounds that meet their needs, demands and expectations. With subliminal messages, the awareness level of the consumers is exceeded, and the codes related to the brand are created subconsciously. This enables consumers to choose the brand and develop their buying behavior. However, these messages, sent to the subconscious of consumers, also have things that do not overlap with ethical values. Individuals exposed to the messages of unacceptable products or services are adversely affected. The most important ethical problem is the role of subliminal messages. The ethical dimension has become controversial as it is possible to use the hidden fears and impulses that people have unconsciously by using them for different purposes from commercial areas, advertising and marketing. Therefore, the channels from which the subliminal messages come from and what techniques are used must be determined and precautions should be taken. One of the areas where subliminal messages are mostly used is the sports sector. Stadiums and crowded sport halls bring together millions of people and provide the appropriate ground for the companies to send real-time subliminal messages at the same time. Thus, sports have become a popular means of meeting companies’ subliminal messages with consumers. In this chapter; it is aimed to provide a theoretical contribution to the studies in this field by dealing with the subliminal messages sent to the subconscious of consumers, the methods and techniques used for this aim, the reasons why they are preferred by the companies, the ethical dimension of the subliminal messages and the effects of subliminal messages in the sports arena.

Despite the growing interest among the scientific community regarding the power of subconscious, the current research did not find any evidence of its superiority over consciousness in generating positive consumer experience. This study shows that researches in subliminal messages have been set to work towards a set of pre-defined results and can only be used to generate some insignificant changes in social behaviour. Such behaviour is elicited only in laboratory conditions with specific situational variables. Interpretation of the existing corpus of the literature shows that subliminal messages can create negative experience which leads to hostile behaviour like derogatory comments on an African by an American citizen when the latter was primed with negative subliminal messages. Positive priming on the other hand showed weak presence in behaviour. However, research in the field of subliminal messages is required to inspect whether it is capable of improving mental health as indicated by few researches. Further exploration is required to prevent subliminal abuse. As indicated in the current study, subliminal messages when used in commercials are not capable of making a significant increase in sales figures when compared to supraliminal messages. Such messages and their wide-spread broadcast are not ethical because of the advertiser’s inclinations to use lascivious, disparaging or satanic stimuli which can lead to fatal outcomes like alleged suicide of a 10-year old boy. Positive experience or happiness is a subjective feeling and is generated by supraliminal messages which has been shown in the study to rely heavily on consciousness.

Creating a superior customer experience is a definitive means to customer happiness. The customer experience though must have meaning and context. However, when the delivered experience is at odds with the customer’s closely held beliefs and values, this creates cognitive dissonance, and instead of the happiness, it is supposed to generate, unhappiness and disengagement results. This chapter explores a unique perspective on cognitive dissonance, customer experience, their linkage and possible outcomes in order to drive customer happiness.

We live in a time that demands more creativity in all spheres of life and business, so creativity is imperative and necessity of the twenty-first century. In this chapter, the author argues the thesis according to which the advertisements and branding directed “not more only on product/service, but also in the wider context of the identity of an institution, company, brand or product, or even further—to its very existence and transformation in time.” (Golub, in Exhibition by Boris Ljubičić: The singularity of plural—Symbol, sign, logo, brand, 2018) The author in this chapter explores the questions: What is the point of transforming creative forms of advertising versus traditional ones? What are some new ways of celebrity endorsement in advertising? What are the specifics of creative advertising in the areas of: products/services—corporate identity—creating the logo of the brand? Do advertisements nudge consumers to a positive experience? Are creative experiments better than traditional ones? (creativity vs. traditional) Do they impress upon the brain differently? Through a qualitative analysis of some mostly award-winning, internationally relevant design projects in creative advertising, the author presents (new) conceptualizations of these projects, but also explores the emotions that these innovative/experimental forms of advertising seek to produce.

In a competitive market, companies must think beyond consumer satisfaction. The key lies in consumer happiness. Disciplines have crossed their traditional boundaries to understand their consumer better. This is reflected in the growing popularity of the use of neuroscientific techniques to understand the consumer brain. On the other hand, the field of behavioral economics has also made progress in understanding human decision making and cognitive bias. In this chapter, we discuss about the cognitive biases that influence decision making (cognitive) and consumer happiness (affective).

Of the traditional marketing mixes that are used to influence consumer purchase decisions, the development of a pricing strategy that retains a loyal customer base without harming profitability remains the most elusive. Advancements in behavioural economics have demonstrated that the economic choices of human beings may not always be necessarily rational. In fact, previous studies have shown that the assumption of rationality is overstated in economic theories. Even under normal circumstances, the consumers tend to confuse price and value, often ending up purchasing high-priced products on the pretext that higher price is associated with a higher value. The inherent elements of irrationality that persist in consumer behaviour offer opportunities for the sellers to develop and apply new heuristics and priming techniques for setting prices that may coax the consumers to make a purchase. Everyone gets influenced by one or another cognitive distortion at some point. On this account, understanding the cognitive biases in consumer decision-making process is key to developing an effective pricing strategy. This chapter gives a detailed account of how well the consumers respond to subtle nuances in price offers and other price-related priming strategies through the lens of behavioural economics.

Creative decision-making can be viewed as comprising two elements—generative and evaluative thinking (Guilford, 1967; Paulus, Coursey, & Kenworthy, 2019; Sunstein & Hastie, 2015). Generative thinking produces a large number of alternatives. Evaluative thinking eliminates less-promising options (and revises them) for a small number of high-quality solutions. Iterative generative-evaluative thinking is discussed in light of dual personality metatraits, neurocognitive networks, and reasoning modes; these three themes—progressing from creative personal motivation to individual cognition to group norms—provide consistent perspectives for generative-evaluative thinking in terms of plasticity–stability metatraits, default-executive brain networks, and abductive–deductive/inductive modes of reasoning, respectively.

Recommender systems are supporting users in the identification of items that fulfill their wishes and needs and are also helping to foster consumer happiness. These systems have been successfully applied in different application domains—examples thereof are the recommendation of movies, books, digital cameras, points of interest, financial services, and software requirements. The major objectives of this chapter are to provide an overview of recommendation approaches including criteria when to use which algorithm, to show different applications of recommendation algorithms going beyond standard e-commerce scenarios and to discuss issues for future research.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have become the presence of daily life. We draw on outstanding research to substantiate that VR/AR are scientific tools that can be integrated in many fields of research, in learning, in marketing campaigns and product design, in psychology, medicine, economy, etc., meeting the principles of circular economy at the same time. Due to the fulminant evolution of communication and interconnected modern devices, VR/AR are more and more present in every business, in every research field. VR/AR facilitate the implementation of simulations and experiments under a safe environment, avoiding possible damages and spending money on expensive technologies. Our study, using references on VR and AR applied in current activities and different fields of business, shows what the current state of knowledge in the field is and opens interesting perspectives regarding the impact of VR and AR on the future market and research, building an interdisciplinary bridge between technology and learning, psychology, medicine, economy (marketing, tourism, and industry). The context in which these technologies will be developed must be seen not only from the perspective of a particular field, but especially as a concrete impact on humans.

Brain scanning of clients will help strategy marketing specialists understand the human brain and its consequent behaviour. Thus, the marketing specialists will know how to change the customers behaviour. The brain behaviour is measured through neuro-marketing techniques: from physiological aspects such as perspiration, the electrical conductivity of the skin, hormonal and neurotransmitter changes, movement and dilation of the pupil, movements of muscles (body and face), to even the understanding of complex cognitive aspects, such as the functional activity of specific regions of the brain through the analysis of different markers such as electrical waves, cerebral metabolism and its blood flow. We believe that smart robots will play a significant role in physical retail in the future. In the last decade, companies have developed a large number of intelligent products. Due to the use of information technology, these products operate somewhat autonomously, cooperate with other products or adapt to changing circumstances. Robotics is a growing industry with applications in numerous markets, including retail, transportation, manufacturing and even as personal assistants. Consumers have evolved to expect more from the buying experience, and retailers are looking at technology to keep consumers engaged. In today’s highly competitive business climate, being able to attract, serve and satisfy more customers is a key to success. Consumer behaviour control and paternalism represent a central role in both behaviour analysis and nudging, and they are needed to elaborate on ethical considerations in this regard. Nudging can profit from behaviour analysis by getting a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of behaviour change. Countless specialized studies show us that the new techniques used by companies to keep the consumer happy are sooner necessary and effective than expensive. A satisfied and happy customer will always return to purchase products and services of the company he already knows and trusts, which continuously supports and motivates him. A company should never ignore the importance of customer satisfaction. There are dozens of factors contributing to the success (or failure) of a business, and customer satisfaction is one of them. Companies need to track this factor and work on improving it to make their customers more loyal and eventually turn them into brand ambassadors. And, the modern techniques used are quite effective and not as expensive as one would think.