Marketing Psychology: How Emotions and Biases Influence Buying Decisions

A customer comparing two prices sees a different offer from a customer viewing the same price beside a higher reference price. Marketing psychology examines how presentation, emotion and social context influence these judgements.

These influences do not provide a reliable formula for making someone buy. Use them to develop specific campaign ideas, then measure the response rather than assuming a familiar psychological principle guarantees sales.

How Emotions Affect Consumer Decisions

Fear, nostalgia and humour give marketers different ways to frame an offer. The choice needs a connection to the product and the customer’s situation. A joke about an everyday inconvenience serves a different purpose from a message explaining a serious risk.

Emotional Appeals in Marketing

Fear

Fear-based messages draw attention to a threat and recommend a response. An insurance advertisement, for example, often describes the financial consequences of an accident before presenting cover as a form of protection.

A 2015 meta-analysis found stronger effects for fear appeals containing explanations of how the recommended response helps or how the audience would perform the action. The research covered varied settings, so the finding does not predict the sales result of an individual advertisement.

For a risk-focused campaign, explain the practical response alongside the problem rather than leaving the audience with a warning and no clear understanding of the action available or the protection being offered.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia connects a message with memories of the past. Older packaging, familiar music and references to shared experiences offer possible starting points for a campaign. Recognition alone does not demonstrate interest in the current product.

For a proposed relaunch, identify the audience familiar with the original version and explain what has changed. A returning design still needs current product information, especially if the ingredients, specifications or intended use differ from the older version.

Humour

Humour deserves a more precise objective than making an advertisement entertaining. Martin Eisend’s meta-analysis found positive effects on attention and attitudes towards advertisements, but the effect on brand attitudes was smaller. The analysis also found reduced source credibility.

Test understanding as well as enjoyment. After showing a proposed advertisement, ask participants to name the product and explain the offer in their own words. If they remember the joke but misunderstand the service, revise the connection between the humour and the message.

Storytelling with Specific Evidence

Creating Emotional Connections

A customer story gives a campaign a person, a problem and a sequence of events. For example, a proposed story for a beginner fitness class would follow someone choosing a session, attending for the first time and describing the experience afterwards.

Use a real customer’s account with permission. Preserve the details behind the experience, including the starting point and relevant limitations. A description of a welcoming first session needs less qualification than a claim about a major physical transformation.

Connecting the Story to the Offer

Show the part the product or service played. For a website project, explain the customer’s original difficulty, the pages created and the resulting change in how visitors find information. Separate documented results from the customer’s personal opinion.

An emotional response to a story is different from evidence of a commercial result. When evaluating a campaign, distinguish video viewing or comments from completed enquiries, purchases and revenue rather than treating every positive reaction as evidence of increased demand.

Cognitive Biases in Pricing and Brand Judgements

Cognitive biases are recurring tendencies in judgement. They help explain why the same information receives different responses under different presentations, but a bias label does not explain every customer’s choice.

Anchoring and the Decoy Effect

Anchoring describes the influence of a reference point on a later judgement. In pricing, a higher reference price gives the displayed selling price a comparison. Make the basis of the comparison explicit rather than presenting an invented original price as evidence of savings.

The decoy effect is more specific than adding any unattractive third option. In the original research by Huber, Payne and Puto, the added option was inferior to one existing option without being inferior to the other in the same way.

Consider a hypothetical choice between 10 GB of storage for €5 and 30 GB for €10. Adding 20 GB for €10 creates an option worse than the 30 GB plan at the same price, while offering more storage than the €5 plan. The comparison illustrates the structure of a decoy rather than proving how customers would respond to these plans.

For a pricing page, explain the actual differences between packages. If higher prices include additional support, state the response times or services included so customers comparing several similar offers have a substantive basis for choosing between the options beyond the order of presentation.

Confirmation Bias and Brand Loyalty

Confirmation bias involves favouring information supporting an existing belief. Research on selective exposure has found a preference for supportive information, with the strength of the preference varying across conditions. This does not mean loyal customers ignore every problem with a brand.

Apply the same caution to marketing analysis. If a team expects an emotional advertisement to perform best, selecting only favourable comments leaves the sales question unanswered because those comments provide no comparison with the orders generated by the alternative campaign. Compare the planned outcome across versions and include negative feedback in the review.

Social Proof and Influencer Marketing

Social proof uses other people’s experiences or behaviour as information for a decision. A detailed account of the same service answers different questions from a celebrity endorsement or a large follower count.

Types of Social Proof

Testimonials: Select accounts explaining the customer’s original problem and experience with the relevant service. A comment about helpful appointment scheduling belongs beside booking information rather than being presented as evidence of treatment results.

User-Generated Content: Customer photographs, reviews and videos provide examples of use outside the brand’s own production. Request permission before reusing customer material. Describe the context accurately rather than implying an exceptional example represents every customer’s experience.

Social Media Influencers: Evaluate a creator’s experience with the product category and the questions their audience asks. Before agreeing a promotion, specify the demonstration, claims and destination page so the recommendation has substance beyond the creator’s popularity.

Likability, Authority and Social Validation

Likability: A familiar personality offers a recognisable voice for a promotion. Keep the recommendation in the creator’s normal style, but check the product explanation rather than assuming a friendly presentation makes the claims accurate.

Authority: Separate relevant expertise from visibility. For a creator reviewing running shoes, ask for the testing conditions and basis for comparison before using the endorsement as evidence of expertise, since a large audience alone provides no evidence of professional qualifications.

Social Validation: Show whose experience the endorsement represents. An experienced athlete’s recommendation answers different questions from a beginner’s account. Avoid turning either account into a claim of universal suitability.

Commercial relationships also need clear disclosure. In Ireland, CCPC and ASA guidance covers monetary and non-monetary benefits, including paid promotions and gifts. Make the advertising relationship visible within the relevant content rather than leaving the disclosure only in a profile biography.

Scarcity and Purchase Urgency

Scarcity messages describe a limit on availability or time. A class with two unbooked places has a capacity limit. A discount ending on Friday has a deadline. Explain the actual restriction rather than combining both into a vague instruction to hurry.

Communicating Genuine Limits

Use stock messages linked to available inventory and remove expired promotions. For a limited edition, describe the production limit only when the business has committed to the stated quantity. Restricted access to a release is different from a restriction on total supply.

A countdown should end when the advertised offer ends. The European Commission identifies timers which reset while the same offer continues as fake countdown timers within its work on manipulative website design.

Measuring the Response to Scarcity

A 2022 meta-analysis covering 131 studies found scarcity effects on purchase intentions varied with the source of scarcity and product characteristics. Purchase intention is different from a completed order, so the findings do not supply a predicted sales increase for a particular promotion.

When testing a genuine deadline message, compare completed purchases and margin with a suitable alternative presentation of the same offer. Record cancellations and refunds as well, because a rise in immediate orders provides an incomplete result if a larger share of those orders is later cancelled or returned after the initial promotion has ended.