The Dimensionality of Consumption Emotion Patterns and Consumer Satisfaction

Although both consumption emotion and satisfaction judgments occur in the post-purchase period, little is known about their correspondence. This article investigates the interrelationships between the two constructs by way of taxonomic and dimen-sional analyses to identify patterns of emotional response to product experiences. Five discriminable patterns of affective experience were uncovered, which were based on three independent affective dimensions of hostility, pleasant surprise, and interest. The results extend prior findings of a simple bidimensional affective-response space and reveal that satisfaction measures vary in their ability to represent the affective content of consumption experiences. T raditional approaches to the study of consumer behavior have emphasized the concept of con-sumer satisfaction as the core of the postpurchase pe-riod. Satisfaction is believed to mediate consumer learning from prior experience and to explain key post-purchase activities, such as complaining, word of mouth, and product usage (Bettman 1979; Howard