The Effect of Positive and Negative Emotional States on the Price Sensitivity to Green Fast-Moving Consumer Goods in the UK

The Effect of Positive and Negative Emotional States on the Price Sensitivity to Green Fast-Moving Consumer Goods in the UK

Oleksandr (Alex) Myroshnychenko

08/09/2023

Consumers are growing increasingly aware about the environmental consequences of their daily purchases, creating a potentially lucrative space for agile brands to leverage sustainable or green fast-moving consumer good (FMCG) production and increase revenue and profit. However, a fuller exploitation of this growth is impeded by the high costs of offering greener FMCG’s, which are passed onto consumers via higher prices, leading to a preference for cheaper, non-green FMCG’s due to price sensitivity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the power of positive and negative emotional states in reducing this price sensitivity and thus, increasing green FMCG buying behaviour. To induce the two emotional states, conventionally happy and sad video stimuli were utilised, followed by a fictional product selection between green and non-green FMCG’s. The research involved two phases. Phase 1 applied a qualitative method in the form of two focus groups (total n = 10) to test and enhance the general research procedure, while gathering additional insights regarding the overall study subject. Phase 2 integrated the refined procedure into a quantitative questionnaire, which involved a sample for each emotional state and a third sample as a control (total n = 300). The results demonstrated that neither positive nor negative emotional states had an overall significant influence on FMCG product selection. The discussion of the results includes insights from Phase 1 and provides recommendations for brands. The study limitations and future research directions are also presented. The research was conducted for and funded by Astroten – a behavioural science consultancy in London.

Psychology, behaviour, mood, pricing, green marketing, advertising

Methods
Overall Design
In accordance with the research questions and hypotheses, the methodology tested the effect of positive and negative emotional states, which were induced by two online videos. Each video contained copyright-free footage, one depicting humorous scenes (positive state), and the other depicting sadness (negative state). The impact of the videos’ mood-inducement was primarily measured by the outcomes of a fictional product selection in which participants chose between a more expensive green FMCG and a less expensive non-green FMCG.
Specific Design
The project comprised two data collection and analysis phases. Phase 1 was a pilot qualitative study in which the overall design described above was discussed/tested and a series of additional questions regarding the relationship between green and non-green FMCG’s, emotional state (mood), and price were asked. Hence, the utility of Phase 1 was two-fold. First, it obtained richer insights afforded by the inherent advantage of qualitative research over quantitative research, through an in-depth exploration of participants’ perspectives around their decision-making regarding more expensive green FMCG’s. Second, this same advantage also yielded direct feedback from the participants on the general procedure so that it could be refined for Phase 2 – an online quantitative questionnaire. The questionnaire’s purpose was to achieve a stronger empirical basis for the effects of positive and negative emotional states.
Phase 1: Pilot Qualitative Study
The qualitative approach for Phase 1 consisted of focus groups. This method was selected because focus groups could facilitate the dynamic development of ideas between participants in contrast to individual in-depth interviews. In the latter, certain thoughts and perspectives could have failed to emerge, and to introduce these thoughts and perspectives, the researcher would risk posing leading questions, affecting data validity. In addition, given the study timeframe, focus groups were deemed to be more feasible in terms of data collection and analysis.
Two focus groups (FG1 – approximately 70 minutes; FG2 – approximately 90 minutes) were conducted, each comprising 5 participants, split approximately by gender. The participants were post-graduate students from Lancaster University and were selected via opportunity sampling by posting the study details in a WhatsApp group chat for residents of the university’s Graduate College accommodations. Participants were each paid £15, and refreshments (snacks and beverages) were provided.
Regarding the mood-inducing stimuli for Phase 1, the positive emotional state stimulus was a video containing clips of monkeys performing comic or happy actions (e.g., reading a newspaper or jumping around) (see Figure 1). The video was sourced from the Nature ALL (2020) channel on YouTube and was copyright-free (https://youtu.be/YQ4xwK7_rUY). The video also included a copyright-free comedic soundtrack, which effectively accompanied the content of the video. The duration of the video was edited down to one minute to ensure sufficient emotional impact, while preventing excessive exposure, which could have led to boredom and, logically, impacted the desired emotional state.

Lancaster University

Data

Myroshnychenko(2023)

Dan Qiao

open

None

English

Data

LA1 4YF

Leslie Hallam

MSC

Marketing

Phase 1 (Qualitative) = 10; Phase 2 (Quantitative) = 300

Correlation,Qualitative(Thematic Analysis),T-Test