Guilty Pleasure or Pleasurable Guilt? Affective Experience of Impulse Buying in Hedonic-Driven Consumption

Abstract

Consumption of hospitality products and services is often driven by hedonic motivations. However, the affective aspect of consumption experience is not well understood in the current hospitality literature. This study explores consumers’ dynamic affective experience in a particular consumption situation—impulse buying. Results of this experimental study suggest that impulse buying leads to a state of cognitive and affective ambivalence. Specifically, cognitive ambivalence (the tension between beliefs about self-indulgence and beliefs about self-control) is positively related to affective ambivalence (a mixed feeling of positive and negative affect). Affective ambivalence is linked to consumers’ normative evaluation of impulse purchases. The results suggest that affective ambivalence manifests itself in two subtly but qualitatively different affective states: “guilty pleasure” and “pleasurable guilt.” Important managerial implications of the findings are also discussed.

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