Can feeling anxious make us more likely to purchase?

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If we want something positive to happen, the chances are we have a few butterflies in our stomach about how things will pan out. In fact, if you aren’t anxious about something significant, one might surmise you don’t really care about the outcome.

When it comes to buying products, marketers may think anxiety is the last thing they want to be associated with their product. However, a new paper from Imperial College London explores the link between hope and anxiety in the context of product adoption, finding that people who experience strong anxiety about purchasing a new product – but who also feel hopeful about its potential to fit their goals or expectations – are more likely to buy it.

In the paper, the researchers make two hypotheses: that consumers’ intentions to adopt a new product are greatest when hope and anxiety are both strong; and that people’s ‘action planning’ and perceived control over product outcomes mediate the effects of strong hope and anxiety on new product adoption.

“Hope is a positive emotion studied in the marketing field, but we found that, when we have strong hope, we also have ambivalent feelings such as anxiety,” says Yu-Ting Lin, teaching and research associate in marketing at Imperial College Business School, discussing the background to the research.

“For example, with a cosmetic service, when we have a strong hope that we want to become more beautiful, at the same time we also have agitating feelings about whether we should go ahead or not. In reality, many people still go ahead, so we felt that this phenomenon was intriguing.”

Future goals

The first field study, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, tested the researchers’ first hypothesis in the context of health – examining the intention of respondents to adopt a medication called ‘pre-exposure prophylaxis’, designed to protect people from contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (Aids).

Ipsos Mori gathered the data for the study with respondents in eight countries who were deemed to be at high risk of contracting HIV/Aids. Participants were given a description of the medication and asked about their feelings about it, as well as their willingness to use it. The researchers differentiated anxiety from other emotions by including questions about fear of contracting HIV/Aids and whether they would find it embarrassing to take the medication. They found that feeling anxious about the health consequences of the medication modestly correlated with both fear and embarrassment.

The more participants hoped that the medication would offer ‘goal-congruent’ life outcomes – that is, be conducive to a goal they want to achieve – the more positive were their intentions to adopt it. As feelings of hope grew, stronger anxiety also had a positive impact on people’s intentions to adopt the drug.

In the second study, researchers surveyed managers attending an executive education programme at a university about a real-world skin-peel product.

Participants were asked to read fictitious social media comments, ostensibly from two product users, about its potential outcomes. One was focused on goal-congruent outcomes (clear, beautiful skin) and another on goal-incongruent outcomes – for example, negative skin reactions.
The researchers created four versions of the ‘social media comment’ to evoke either weak hope, strong hope, weak anxiety or strong anxiety. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions and then informed that they could receive $4 as compensation, which they could use to buy a sample of the product at the end if they wanted.

A third study was conducted to determine whether the effects were replicated with another product – an energy drink – and by inducing feelings of anxiety via product disclaimers and social media comments.

Carried out with postgraduate students, the study again asked participants whether they would like to purchase a sample – this time after they had read advertising disclaimers about the energy drink’s potential side-effects and purported online reviews.

Lin says: “We were most interested in products where there is a possibility for people to yearn for something. We mostly looked at products where people expressed strong desires or hope in the first place, but where there was also room for anxiety to co-exist.”

The researchers found that strong feelings of both hope and anxiety led people to ‘action plan’ or mentally consider how to achieve the outcome they want from a product while avoiding consequences that cause anxiety – for example, reading usage instructions carefully or asking friends. This planning could lead to increased feelings of control and, therefore, improve new product adoption, the research suggests.

Implications

If consumers are known to be anxious about the potential outcomes of new products – for example, the side-effects of a medicine – there is an opportunity to build on that, according to the researchers. Lin says: “If market research reveals that consumers have strong anxiety about outcomes from new product adoption, our research informs current practice that, rather than downplaying anxiety, marketing communications might position the product or service offering around strong hope – that is, important, desirable outcomes from the new product are possible.”

Conversely, if research shows that people have strong hopes for a product, but low anxiety, marketers could provide information designed to heighten anxiety about potential outcomes of adopting the product – for example, by adding warning labels or disclaimers.

This is not about frightening consumers, however. “When anxiety is alone, our human intuition is to avoid this threatening stimuli, so they wouldn’t want to pursue the product at all – but, when hope kicks in, the negative impacts of anxiety on new product adoption decrease,” says Lin.

For Andreas Eisingerich, professor of marketing at Imperial College Business School, the most encouraging finding of the research is that anxiety is not always a bad thing. “Strong anxiety, when paired with strong hope, can lead to greater levels of perceived control and that’s because people have action planning,” he says. “Anxiety does not always have to be bad when paired with strong hope – the strong hope has to be there.”

‘Strong anxiety boosts new product adoption when hope is also strong’, Yu-Ting Lin, Deborah J MacInnis, Andreas B Eisingerich, Journal of Marketing, Vol 84, 5: pp60-78. First published 10 July 2020.

This article was first published in the January 2021 issue of Impact.