MARKET RESEARCH PAPER-

Consumer Emotional Intelligence Scale(CEIS)

Sub- Research Methodology & Marketing Research

Prof. D.N Murthy

By:
Ayushi Jain-10
Kshitija Desai-22
 Introduction:

Concept of EI and CEI

EI is “an ability to recognize the meaning of emotions and their relationships, and to reason and
solve the problem on the basis of them” (Mayer et al. 1999, p. 267). The concept of EI dates back
to 1872 when Charles Darwin published the first research on emotional-social intelligence. [1]

The recent development of a comprehensive conceptualization of EI in social psychology

prompted Kidwell et al. (2008) to develop the concept of CEI. CEI is a domain specific concept
that captures EI associated with consumer behavior. [1]

Consumer Emotional Intelligence Scale (CEIS) is the ability to understand how consumers are
feeling and to convey that you understand their emotions. Tapping onto emotional route by
targeting core human emotions like trust, happiness, family, fun and love- helps create a bond
between the consumer and the provider. [2]

Four components of CEIS formulated by Kidwell are as follows:

1)Perceiving Emotion-the ability to perceive, appraise and express emotions accurately.

2)Facilitating Emotion- The ability to access, generate and use emotions to facilitate thought.

3)Understanding Emotion- The ability to analyze complex emotions and form emotional
knowledge.

4)Managing Emotion- The ability to regulate emotions to promote a desired outcome. [3]

Despite the importance of emotion in decision making, research has yet to fully understand how
consumers use emotional information to make effective decisions.

The objective of current research is:

- To focus on emotional intelligence in the consumer domain in light of past research focusing
solely on general emotional intelligence, as emotion is the missing link in customer experience.

- To understand emotional knowledge and how it leads to a desired outcome or make a choice
selection to identify how people use emotions to influence performance.[4]
 CEIS application in world of marketing can help in providing answers to questions such as;

 How does emotional processing influence purchase decisions? [6]

 How does CEI in case of gender influence purchase decisions? [6]
 How to identify those consumers who make the highest (and lowest) quality consumer
decisions? [6]
 How to identify coping strategies and service outcomes in circumstances of service failure? [6]
 What are the impact of consumer emotional intelligence of consumers when purchasing with
nutritional claims?[5]

For example: Consumers with high levels of nutrition knowledge who lack the emotional ability
to understand which emotions are important and how to manage those emotions toward unhealthy
eating, are likely to make poor quality decisions. Understanding these emotional deficiencies can
provide a means to subsequently improve the quality of consumption decisions.[5]

In this research, we will develop and validate a measure of emotional intelligence (Consumer
Emotional Intelligence Scale- CEIS) in hopes that consumer issues might be thoroughly examined.

 MEASURING CONSUMER EMOTIONS IN SERVICE ENCOUNTERS

Consider the range of emotions that make up the experience of life, emotions such as love, anger,

excitement and joy. Yet by all accounts there is only one emotion that we experience as consumers,

satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the second most measured index in Australian business after

net profit and of course no one would argue that trying to achieve customer satisfaction is what

we are all about.

SATISFACTION AND EMOTION:

"I wanted to give them a piece of my mind. I wanted to throw the clothes back at them and shout,

walk out, phone the general manager...and let them know what terrible service they offered".
As the above quotations from the research illustrate, our interactions with services and service

personnel can make for very descriptive and highly involving stories and include vivid emotional

imagery. Not only do we experience such episodes both good and bad ourselves and tell others,

but we frequently listen to the retelling of similar events from friends, family or colleagues.

If nothing else they make for good dinner party conversations, however the evidence is that we

may more readily seek and rely on such personal sources of information when purchasing services,

the oft mentioned "word of mouth" influence. These memories of service encounters, may not

simply be "cold" cognitions of service attributes, but can be laden with affective content. This is

especially highlighted when we consider the growing hospitality, tourism, leisure and

entertainment industries. These are about experiential consumption, and experiences are

emotional. We don’t ski to be satisfied, we want exhilaration. We feel serenity in the peacefulness

and beauty of a wilderness area. We feel doses of terror and amazement from the latest blockbuster

movie, or can be moved to tears by an opera.

The development of a future relationship between the firm and the customer can in fact be

determined by this emotional content. On those occasional times when things don’t go right we

don’t just feel dissatisfied. We feel angry, disappointed, frustrated and cheated.

NEW CONCEPTS OF EMOTION:

In the past ten years there has been a revolution in emotion research that has opened up a whole

new way of conceptualizing and understanding emotions, yet very little of this work has filtered

through to applied areas such as marketing. It is these new theories that we have been applying in

the analysis of consumer emotions. These new theories go beyond simply a few basic emotions

with facial expressions or an internal feeling. Rather emotions are viewed as functional, in other
words, they serve to inform us and regulate our interactions with the environment. The functional

model of emotions conceives of each emotion as having a particular antecedent or cause, a specific

thought or appraisal, a specific feeling and expression, a specific action tendency, a specific action

and a specific goal. In other words, an emotion is all these things.

The concept of emotion being defined by script elements, represents a framework for research into

services that is consistent with, and is an extension of a number of previous approaches. These

include the development of and the use of the critical incident technique in identifying the factors

underlying satisfying and unsatisfying service experiences and service script analysis to investigate

the precursors of consumer expectations. Furthermore, it may be that the stories people tell based

on their service experiences may be structured in a consistent and predictable manner according

to the specific emotions they recall.

Different emotions may arise not only from different antecedent causes but may be associated with

unique patterns of appraisal, action tendencies, motivational goals and actions. This is consistent

with both the emotional appraisal and the emotion prototype or emotion script approach to the

study of emotions, and thus provides a solid theoretical framework for analysis.

Emotion appraisal patterns and knowledge structures developed through past experience interact

sub-consciously with real-time experience in a dynamic process of emotional elicitation. Thus an

understanding of the content of these emotion patterns and structures can give detailed clues as to

the focal antecedents, cognitions and behavioural tendencies and outcomes for specific service

situations. Such emotional knowledge structures may comprise the structural content and dynamic

processes behind the expectations that customers have for any service interaction.

In studying consumer emotion in services both situational influences and individual differences
need to be considered. Services are not a homogeneous domain differing only according to industry

classification but are heterogeneous according to certain fundamental characteristics across

industry. These characteristics may moderate the differing emotional knowledge structures that

people form.[7]

 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research design is primarily exploratory and analytical in nature. The study is mainly based

on the data collected from both Primary and Secondary sources.

The secondary data is collected from the websites and research papers. An effort has also been

made to present different studies in newspapers, journals, magazines and also from the doctoral

works. The primary data is collected through sampling method. For this purpose, a structured

questionnaire was drafted and distributed over post graduate’s students. Based on the prototype

model of emotions, a structured qualitative self-completion questionnaire, the Consumer

Emotions in Service Industry Survey was developed, which guided respondents through the

emotional knowledge structure of their experience. When asked to recall a specific service

experience people can access a detailed and rich emotional memory of the event. Some events are

more emotion laden than others, but the more intense the experience, the more likely it is to be

remembered, and these memories can be long lasting. If someone has a really good or bad

experience they are going to remember it for a long time.

Sampling: Random Sampling Method

Respondents (n=25) post-graduate from the College name “Prin L.N Welingkar Institute

of Management and Research”. The mean age was 23 years ranging from 21 years through to 29

years. Females comprised 56% of the respondents and 29% were males (15% did not disclose their
gender). As the study was exploratory in its aim, people were free to remember either positive or

negative experiences. As expected, more negative encounters (57%) were recalled than positive

encounters (29%) or experiences that were classified as both positive and negative (14%).

There were no gender differences for the recall of positive or negative experiences, or the number

of emotions words recalled.

Sampling Findings:

Some preliminary key findings from the research program into consumer emotions were presented.

The research was focused initially on building, for the first time, a taxonomy of emotions

experienced in services and understanding how this may differ according to different services. The

next stage will be to unfold the scripts that comprise these emotions in different settings.

 HYPOTHESIS

Hypothesis 1: Customers’ self-declared mood state immediately after the service encounter will

be positively associated with their evaluation of the service encounter and the overall

assessment of the firm.

Hypothesis 2: Customer would experience best service from Banking industry, as Banking is a

Highly trusted and reliable industry and high cost involvement is there.
References:

1. https://search.proquest.com/docview/1783736005/40FA4D505F904506PQ/6?accountid=890
41
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24099053_Knowledge_Calibration_What_Consumers_K
now_and_What_They_Think_They_Know
3. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Customer-Emotional-Intelligence-Scale-
CEIS_tbl1_258158723
4. https://positivepsychology.com/importance-of-emotional-intelligence/
5. http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/v35/naacr_vol35_338.pdf
6. https://search.proquest.com/results/40FA4D505F904506PQ/1?accountid=89041
7. https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?q=measuring+consumer+emotions+in+services&hl=en&
as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DF3o4WYeocqMJ