To buy or not buy? A review of affective priming in purchase decision

Abstract:

The current paradigm of neuroeconomics goes beyond merely axiomatic models and contemplates the influence of psychological factors on economic decisions. Under this framework, the main aim of the current review is to address the influence of affective priming in purchase decision. For this purpose, we first summarize the affective priming literature, followed by a section concentrating on purchase-decision studies that show that this phenomenon is value-driven, going beyond the emotionless calculation of traditional utility models in microeconomics. Finally, both themes are connected by reviewing the available experiments investigating affective priming effects on economic and purchase decision. We discuss these findings within a framework that considers that humans, as biological entities, attribute salience to hedonic information, highlighting the value-driven nature of decision-making, especially purchase decisions.

Keywords::

• affective priming
• decision-making
• purchase decision
• prospective theory