Existing evidence for affect’s influence on information processing and choice under high elaboration is mixed. In addition, affective choice is often viewed as erroneous in that it is assumed to lead to regret. We show that affect has a reliable impact on choice under high elaboration, which occurs through a combination of heuristic and systematic processing. Furthermore, consumers were able to correct for the impact irrelevant affect had on systematic processing but not for its impact on less conscious heuristic processing. Finally, affective purchases led to greater long-term satisfaction for important purchases, suggesting that affective choice can be functional.

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Still a lot of products are advertised and sold on the basis of their feature list. Marketing teams go out and ask consumers what new feature they require, and then return to the company to implore the technologist to provide them in the next release of the product. In the case of manifest and latent consumer needs and some conceptual ideas about new products this is feasible, however, if it comes to latent needs and non-existing products then traditional marketing methodologies do not suffice. How do we specify consumer requirements for products or features that do not even exist? This paper specifies a research methodology for next generation product developments on the basis of context-aware latent consumer needs.

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Recent research has identified a positivity effect in consumers’ evaluations of agents, such as friends and professional critics, who provide word-of-mouth evaluations and recommendations. Specifically, agreement with an agent on previously loved alternatives is perceived as more diagnostic of the agent’s suitability than agreement on previously hated alternatives. This article argues that the positivity effect arises from greater ambiguity about attribute ratings of hated versus loved alternatives. Three studies support this by showing that the effect is moderated by the number of attributes, the number of alternatives, and the revelation of an agent’s attribute ratings, and is mediated by attribute ambiguity.

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