The weight of the saddened soul: the bidirectionality between physical heaviness and sadness and its implications for sensory marketing

ABSTRACT

Heaviness is a bodily metaphor used to express sadness. Building on embodied cognition theory and metaphor theory, we argue that sadness is grounded in bodily sensation of heaviness, which has important sensory marketing implications for engaging consumer senses to affect consumer decision-making and attitude formation processes. We found support for this metaphorical link between heaviness and sadness across six studies. We showed that carrying a heavy bag saddened individuals and increased the valuation of a teddy bear. Intention to donate to a charity supporting endangered tigers increased when burdened participants watched a sad video about these animals. Conversely, sadness induced physical heaviness and increased preference for an easy-to-maintain sofa. Further, sad individuals disliked an advertisement for a sports drink that figured energy-consuming actions. Our findings inform sensory marketing practice about embedding the bodily sensation of heaviness to induce sadness in marketing communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Embodied cognition
• heavy
• sadness
• metaphor
• sensory marketing
• customer experience

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Professor Victoria K. Wells and two anonymous reviewers for their extremely constructive and helpful guidance. We would also like to thank Kai Qin CHAN for his insightful comments on the earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In a separate pre-test, we asked participants to elaborate on the benefits they can get by choosing the two products (58.6% male, M_age = 38.10, SD = 11.36, n = 28). Responses in regard to ‘an easy-to-maintain sofa’ include ‘comfort without stress’, ‘look good without effort’ and ‘easy to keep clean’, whereas thoughts on ‘good rebound elasticity’ include ‘won’t sink down as much when you sit on it’, ‘keeps its new look a lot better’, ‘remain firm and comfortable for a long time’ and ‘don’t sag in the middle easily and keeps it shape well’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yu-chen Hung

Yu-chen Hung is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Business, Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), Singapore. She holds a PhD in Marketing from the National University of Singapore. Her research interests include customer decision making, consumer behaviour and sensory marketing. Her previous work has been published in journals such as International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Xue Zheng

Xue Zheng is a Lecturer at the Department of Organizational Behaviour and Human Resource Management, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), China. Previously, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Erasmus Center of Behavioural Ethics, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. Her research mainly focuses on the intersection of emotion, power, and conflict management. Her previous work has been published in journals such as Social Psychology and Personality Science and Human Relations.

Jamie Carlson

Jamie Carlson is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the Faculty of Business and Law, the University of Newcastle, Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Business with Honours I, and a PhD in Marketing. His research interests include customer experience management, consumer behaviour and service performance issues. His publications appear in journals including the Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Services Marketing, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Brand Management, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Managing Service Quality and numerous others.

Laura M. Giurge

Laura M. Giurge holds a PhD in Management from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Her research is concerned with unethical behaviour, time, decision-making, power and leadership. Her previous work has been published in journals such as Human Relations and The International Journal of Human Resource Management.