Guilt in Marketing Research: An Elicitation–Consumption Perspective and Research Agenda

• Date: 01 July 2015
• Author: Paul Baines,Paolo Antonetti
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12043
• Published date: 01 July 2015

© 2014 British Academy of Management and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,9600 Garsington

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International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 17, 333–355 (2015)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12043

Guilt in Marketing Research: An

Elicitation–Consumption Perspective and

Research Agenda

Paolo Antonetti and Paul Baines1

Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK, and 1Cranfield School of Management,

Cranfield University, Cranfield MK43 0AL, UK

Corresponding author email: paolo.antonetti@wbs.ac.uk

Guilt regulates many consumption processes and, consequently, marketers frequently

use appeals based on guilt to influence consumers’ behaviour. Owing to the multidis-

ciplinary interest in this emotion, however, the literature is diverseand fragmented. The

effectiveness of guilt appeals is contested, and some authors suggestthat the use of this

emotion in marketing might be unethical. Furthermore, research to date has not

explored the potential relationshipsbetween the experience of guilt in consumption and

the elicitation of this emotion through marketing appeals.This paper analyses existing

research on guilt in marketing, developing four specific contributions based on the

evidence reviewed. First, it shows under what circumstances feelings of guilt support

consumer self-regulation processes. Second,it outlines evidence-based managerial rec-

ommendations on how to produce effective guilt appeals and avoid the potentially

unethical consequences of marketing through this emotion.Third, it identifies a gap in

existing theorizing and presents an elicitation–consumption perspective of guilt in

marketing as a frameworkthat complements current approaches to this research topic.

Fourth, it developsan agenda for future research and suggests eleven research hypoth-

eses for the advancementof this field. Through the analysis of researchproduced within

different disciplinary perspectives, this study develops a necessary foundation for

future work on the role of guilt in marketing processes.

Introduction

Emotions have always played an important role in

marketing research (Copeland 1924; Holbrook and

Batra 1987; McGarry 1958; Sternthal and Craig

1974; Udell 1965). Guilt especially has received sig-

nificant attention from both practitioners (e.g. Hesz

and Neophytou 2010; Roberts 2009) and academics

(e.g. Bozinoff and Ghingold 1983; Cotte et al. 2005;

Duhachek et al. 2012) and guilt appeals are used

very often in differing marketing contexts (Huhmann

and Brotherton 1997; Szmigin et al. 2011).

The academic literature, however, is fragmented

and, to our knowledge, no attempt at reviewing the

entire body of knowledge exists. Such fragmentation

is partly explained by the bifurcation between guilt

research in advertising and in consumer behaviour.

The former sub-discipline evaluates the persuasive-

ness of guilt appeals (e.g. O’Keefe 2000, 2002),

while consumer guilt research focuses instead on the

experience of guilt (i.e. why do we feel guilty? what

is the phenomenology of guilt?) and its role in regu-

lating decision-making (e.g. Goldsmith et al. 2012;

Soscia 2007). This tendency to compartmentalize the

development of knowledge has led to many unre-

solved issues that have both conceptual and practical

relevance. It is unclear, in the first place, whether

eliciting guilt is an effective marketing communica-

tions tool. Some argue for its effectiveness (e.g.

Lindsey et al. 2007), while others warn against its

© 2014 British Academ

y

of Mana

g

ement and John Wile

y

& Sons Ltd.

use (e.g. Brennan and Binney 2010). It is also not

clear under what circumstances using guilt is

ethically acceptable. Some scholars have questioned

the ethicality of marketing campaigns based on nega-

tive emotions altogether, since they purportedly

reduce individual independence (Beauchamp and

Bowie 1988), are perceived as manipulative (Arthur

and Quester 2003) and can generate anxiety in

certain audiences (Hyman and Tansey 1990). None-

theless, while analyses of the ethical risks associated

with fear are available in the literature (Hastings

et al. 2004), no review, to our knowledge, provides a

summary of the risks associated with the use of guilt

that is grounded in empirical evidence (rather than

normative arguments). Finally, research lacks a clear

understanding of how the experience of guilt elicited

by marketing appeals interacts with the same

emotion experienced during consumption decisions.

Psychological insights suggest that past memories of

guilt influence how this emotion is processed at sub-

sequent times (Baumeister et al. 2007; Philippe et al.

2011), but this topic has not been investigated in

previous research.

In this paper, we present a comprehensive litera-

ture review on guilt in marketing that seeks to build

connections between work produced within different

academic disciplines in order to address these out-

standing issues. We examine to what extent and

under what circumstances the elicitation of guilt can

be considered an effective marketing tool. In order to

account for the current gap in the understanding of

how elicited-guilt influences (or is influenced by)

guilt experienced during consumption decisions, we

introduce an elicitation–consumption perspective

aimed at linking how guilt messages are produced by

organizations with the experience of the same

emotion during consumption choices. We outline

clear managerial implications and discuss ethical

issues on the basis of the evidence. Finally, the paper

identifies areas of further research and presents

eleven associated research hypotheses for scholars to

investigate in future.

The article is structured as follows. First, we sum-

marize the approach adopted to develop this litera-

ture review. Subsequently, we define guilt and outline

its fundamental characteristics. In the review of the

literature, we summarize evidence on the role of guilt

in marketing. This is followed by a discussion where

we: (1) present a summary of the findings; (2) intro-

duce an elicitation–consumption perspective that

helps to investigate the interplay between emotional

experiences elicited during the communication

process and emotions experienced in consumption;

(3) outline the relevant managerial implications that

emerge from the review; and (4) discuss the ethical

issues raised by the evidence analysed. We conclude

with a research agenda, which includes research

questions and research hypotheses that inform future

scholarship in this field.

Approach to the review

Research on guilt spans the social sciences. Our goal

is to review papers on the role of guilt in a marketing

context. Therefore, we analysed all the articles pub-

lished in major marketing journals identified through

searches on EBSCO Business Source Complete and

other electronic databases. We identified 88 papers

across many leading academic journals in the field,

including the Journal of Marketing Research,

Journal of Marketing,Journal of Consumer

Research,Journal of Business Research,Marketing

Letters,Psychology & Marketing,Advances in Con-

sumer Research,Journal of Consumer Psychology

and the Journal of Business Ethics. From the analysis

of these papers, we identified other publications that,

although not published in marketing journals,

present evidence relevant to consumption and mar-

keting. This leads to a total of 109 publications,

which represent the core of the empirical findings

reviewed in this manuscript.

A third phase of the research project involved

reviewing research outside marketing to identify

potential gaps and flaws in the scholarship. This

involved reviewing a significant amount of work (86

records including both academic articles and books)

in other areas of the social sciences. This stage ended

when we reached theoretical saturation (i.e. no new

insights were uncovered in subsequent reading of

papers) (Bowen 2008).

Defining guilt

Scholars have debated the features of guilt for

decades (Leary 2007; Parrott 2004; Tangney and

Dearing 2002; Wolf et al. 2011; Zeelenberg and

Breugelmans 2008). Appraisal theory suggests that

emotional experiences are not absolute. What define

emotions are the patterns of appraisals associated

with discrete emotional reactions (Roseman 1991;

Roseman et al. 1994). From this perspective, three

key considerations arise when defining guilt.

334 P. Antonetti and P. Baines