Unformatted Attachment Preview
Psychology 3520
Capella University
Tomeka Glenn
02/11/2018
EMOTIONS
AND
MARKETING
Emotional branding refers to the creation of an emotional connection to one company or
firm that would make separate and unique from the rest with the aim of creating a brand loyalty
over a period (Kohli, Suri & Kapoor, 2015). Fear is a response to the physical and emotional
danger and therefore is commonly used to catch the attention of the potential client. The reason as
to why people tend to protect themselves from legitimate threats is due to the fear instilled in them.
Bad experiences can trigger a response of fear within people that is hard to defeat.
According to a protection motivation theory by Rogers 1975, individuals get motivated to
protect themselves from psychological, physical as well as social threats whenever they get faced
by a new threat. The new threat is regarded as the fear appeal, and therefore a coping appraisal is
initiated (Rudert et al. 2015). The initiation of the coping appraisal is based on the four variables
that include severity of the threat, perceived susceptibility in case of no adaptive behavior
associated, and the availability of coping responses to provide solutions as well as the person’s
ability to adapt and carry on the necessarily required behavior.
Fear is persuasive, automatic and to an extreme, it is out of control and is build up in a
person’s operating system as a defense mechanism (Prochaska & Norcross, 2018). Fear operates
in marketing in two ways: perceived vulnerability and perceived severity. Perceived vulnerability
refers to the likelihood of a product to hurt someone while perceived severity simply means the
extent to which the product can hurt. If an individual has a feeling that a product is likely to hurt,
then they get threated, and a response measure to cope with the threat is taken.
EMOTIONS AND MARKETING
Political advertising
Scare tactics in politics are much common and consist of the spread of frightening and
exaggerated rumors of an impending threat that has the main aim as to arouse public fear especially
of a certain opponent as a candidate (Millan, 2016). Scare tactics are more of psychological
manipulation through repetition to influence the public to gather more votes as well as followers.
The fear messages instilled are meant to chase away or make some of the candidates drop from
contesting to reduce competition.
Psychological torture among the opponents may instill fear to their inner person and lead
to some of the consequences that are favorable to the competitor. The ads put on the advertisement
channels spread more hate rather than unity as it may cause conflicts between the parties involved
due to lack of respect. Furthermore, mockery is much encouraged and abusive language may also
be used and may result to the corruption of the morals values of a community.
Perceived severity of the threats can be much effective as the person who is considered less
suitable for a position may be compelled to withdraw from the race giving a chance to the large
fish. The extent to which the emotional torture along with others that may include bribery and
assault may increase fear in the person and the best option to find a coping response is either to
support the opponent as a way to show solidarity even though it is involuntary to keep off fear.
The social conditions that that support fearfulness includes one having a little support from
the home ground as well as being considered irrelevant by the people and the leaders in the race.
EMOTIONS AND MARKETING
Incompetency, as well as lack of the necessary educational qualifications, may deem one
to be unsuitable to compete in any vacancy due to fear leading to support of the opponent. A person
may accelerate fear especially if he/ she is of lower self-esteem and therefore may lack the courage
even to speak in public.
Public health advertising
Public health advertising relates to issues of health and the general well-being of a person
and the general population (Brownson et al. 2017). The kind of advertisements that are conducted
here relates to diseases of high severity such as HIV/AIDS and cancer. Emotions are the drivers
of a human being and therefore using fear to alter personal emotions play a significant role to
discouraging unwanted behaviors. One such example would be to create ads that associate teen
pregnancy with HIV/AIDs such that people or individuals at the age bracket may have fear in
engaging in unsafe sexual behaviors with the aim of avoiding the contraction of HIV/AIDs.
Another example would be painting an awful picture of the lungs of a smoker to discourage
smoking.
Perceived susceptibility is a key factor makes the adverts effective in the installation of
fear to the individuals as they also fear to be like the example used in the ads and therefore prefer
to abstain or adopt the wanted behaviour for the adolescent and thus indirectly avoiding teenage
pregnancy (Van Royen, 2017). For the smokers, the image of a healthy lung compared to a
diseased lung may discourage smoking by introducing an emotion of fear and the person may opt
for rehabilitation.
The social conditions that may foster fearfulness are the existence of a person within the
community to whom have been a victim and maybe looks scary such that none of the people would
wish to be with the condition. Fear in an individual maybe boosted by the perceived severity
painting the broader image of the situation as well as maintenance of self-esteem.
Commercial advertising
Fear in the commercial industry is necessary to increase the consumption of a certain
commodity (Bergstrom & Randall, 2016). For example, in the public transport industry, ads that
show fatal accidents and wreckages may be used to instill fear so that people can avoid careless
driving and over speeding that result from drunkards or multitasking while driving such using
mobile phones while driving.
Both perceived susceptibility and the perceived severity play a key role to the installation
of fear among the drivers and the passengers. For this reason, speed regulators maybe advertised
along with the advert as an alternative to prevent accidents. Through this, the seats are fastened
with seat belts, and speed regulators fitted to the car. The ads there contributed to market another
product through fear.
The social conditions that foster fearfulness in the community are the mass carnages that
result to claiming a lot of lives and therefore the necessity to avoid more deaths (Dovidio et al.
2017). Also, personal measures that may be due to disability that may occur along with an accident
may instil fear that results to low usage of phones while driving. Passengers at personnel levels
may fasten their seat belts before the start of a journey.
Fear is intrinsic and a powerful weapon to destabilize an enemy. Also, fear can be used to
promote the desired behavior and as well discourage unwanted behavior. Also, in commercial
activities, fear can be used to search and venture into new markets such as seat belts for passenger
vehicles.
References
Bergstrom, J. C., & Randall, A. (2016). Resource economics: an economic approach to natural
resource and environmental policy. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Brownson, R. C., Baker, E. A., Deshpande, A. D., & Gillespie, K. N. (2017). Evidence-based
public health. Oxford University Press.
Dovidio, J. F., Piliavin, J. A., Schroeder, D. A., & Penner, L. A. (2017). The social psychology of
prosocial behavior. Psychology Press.
Kohli, C., Suri, R., & Kapoor, A. (2015). Will social media kill branding?. Business Horizons,
58(1), 35-44.
Millan, M. (2016). The Shadows of Social Fear: Emotions, Mentalities and Practices of the
Propertied Classes in Italy, Spain and France (1900–1914). Journal of Social History,
50(2), 336-361.
Prochaska, J. O., & Norcross, J. C. (2018). Systems of psychotherapy: A transtheoretical analysis.
Oxford University Press.
Rudert, S. C., Reutner, L., Walker, M., & Greifeneder, R. (2015). An unscathed past in the face of
death: Mortality salience reduces individuals' regrets. Journal of experimental social
psychology, 58, 34-41.
Van Royen, K. (2017). Sexy detection?! Monitoring of sexual harassment among adolescents on
social networking sites in an effective and desirable way (Doctoral dissertation, University
of Antwerp).