The Origins of Pleasure in Cultural Consumption
A new study by Andrea Rurale (Department of Marketing), Giulia Miniero (Università della Svizzera Italiana and SDA Bocconi) and Michela Addis (University of Rome 3 and SDA Bocconi) - Effects of Arousal, Dominance, and Their Interaction on Pleasure in a Cultural Environment, in Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 31, Issue 8, August 2014, DOI: 10.1002/mar.20723 - sheds light on the relation between pleasure and two other affective dimensions for the hedonic consumption of arts and culture. This research, in fact, highlights the central role of pleasure for cultural consumption, by providing evidence that arousal (i.e. the intensity of the affective dimension) and dominance (i.e. the dominant nature of the affective dimension) positively affect pleasure, which then has a positive impact on attitude and behavioral intentions.
Cultural products such as books, movies or exhibitions are hedonic products. Every hedonic experience, compared to utilitarian products, stimulates pleasure, and thus consumption is not an end in itself. The consumption of arts and culture, however, provides rich and holistic experiences, and pleasure is just one of the emotions that might be evoked. Moreover, different emotions might lead to pleasure, but little is known about the holistic affective dimensions of arts and culture. So Rurale, Miniero and Addis explored what affects pleasure in the context of a cultural experience, and what is its relation with behavior. The authors collected data from 533 structured questionnaires that were filled in at the end of the visiting experience at a popular historical villa in the center of a European city from December 2011 to January 2012.
How consumers value arts and culture is a function of the way qualitative and quantitative factors of the experience interact. This makes the environment where the experience takes place a crucial element to be taken into account when analyzing the pleasure generated by experiences such as visiting an exhibition or attending a concert. Many studies have used the PAD model to understand how environmental stimuli influence consumers' emotions and so attitudinal and behavioral dimensions. This model assumes that physical and tangible stimuli have a direct impact on these emotions and as such they influence how individuals experience the environment. The three affective dimensions explored in the PAD model, i.e. pleasure, arousal and dominance, have always been studied as independent variables. Recently, however, it has been suggested that they might interact. So the authors expect that dominance and arousal should affect pleasure, thus implying a hierarchy among the PAD dimensions.
The findings of the visiting experience questionnaire point out the central role of pleasure in the hedonic experience. Not only pleasure is the main predictor and influencer of satisfaction and, indirectly, of recommendation. Interestingly, arousal and dominance impact on satisfaction not directly, but only through pleasure. This means, for example, that keeping visitors' attention and involvement high, and offering an efficient wait-time management, result in a pleasurable visit, which makes the visitors more satisfied and then more likely to recommend the experience to acquaintances.
The study, however, provides another interesting result. The interaction between arousal and dominance do not positively affect pleasure, as one might expect, but has a negative impact. Such emerging and surprising finding provides an initial insight for marketing managers: a visiting experience where both dominance and arousal are at their maximum level can decrease the level of pleasure consumers experience, thus being counterproductive. Overall, this study provides a better understanding of the centrality of pleasure in hedonic experiences to all those organizations operating especially in the arts and cultural sector.