When bad moods work: Emotional priming in marketing negotiations

Emotions play a key role in marketing, yet their role in sequential decision making is not well understood. Common wisdom holds that positive and neutral emotions are best, but underestimates the value of negative emotions. This paper examines how emotional states affects decisions in marketing negotiations through the lens of game theory. Building on empirical research using ultimatum games, this paper demonstrates that both positive and negative emotional priming increase generous behaviours compared with neutral conditions. The findings of this paper offer actionable insights for marketing practitioners seeking to optimise negotiations, promotional offerings and customer engagement strategies. This paper challenges traditional rational actor models by showing how systematic emotional effects influence economic decisions that marketers can measure, test and strategically incorporate into customer experiences. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at http://hstalks.com/business.