Russell Stimulus Model

Answer 1

Simple yet fundamental model of how people respond to environments. The environment, its conscious and unconscious perceptions, and interpretation influence how people feel in that environment. Feelings, rather than perceptions/thoughts drive behavior. Typical outcome variable is "approach" or "avoidance" of an environment, but other possible outcomes can be added to model.

Model of effect

Cognition the mental process of knowing including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment. Affect or feeling is central to how people respond to an environment. Russel's model of Affect helps in understanding feelings in service environments. Emotional responses have 2 main dimensions: Pleasure and arousal.

Pleasure is a direct subjective response to the environment, depending on how much the individual likes or dislikes the environment.

Arousal refers to how stimulated the individual feels, ranging from deep sleep to the highest levels of adrenaline. Arousal quality depends on information rate or load of an environment. An environment is stimulating if it has a high information rate, when it is complex or has motion or change in it. A relaxing environment with low information has the opposite characteristic. Arousal is much more subjective than pleasure.

Examples

· Anger is high arousal and high displeasure. Most emotions can be dissected into cognitive and affective components.

· Firms can set targets for affective states.

· A bungee - jumping firm might want its customers to feel aroused.

· A disco or theme park operator might want customers to feel excited.

· A bank will want customers to feel confident

· A spa would want customers to feel relaxed.

· An overnight flight would want its customers sleepy after dinner.

Drivers of affect

Affect can be caused by perception and cognitive processes of any degree of complexity. However, the more complex a cognitive process becomes, the more powerful its potential impact on affect. Eg a customer's disappointment with service level and food quality in a restaurant ( a complex, cognitive process, with perceived quality compared to previously held service expectations) cannot be compensated by a simple cognitive process such as the subconscious perception of pleasant background music.

Most encounters are routine, with little high - level cognitive processing. Hence most of the time it is the simple cognitive process - the conscious and even unconscious perceptions of space, colour, scents,, etc. that determine how people feel in the service setting. In case higher levels of cognitive processes are triggered, through something surprising in the service environment, it is the interpretation of this surprise that determine people's feelings.

Behavioral consequences of affect

Pleasant environments result in approach, unpleasant ones in avoidance behaviours. Arousal acts as an amplifier of the basic effect of pleasure on behaviour. In a pleasant environment increasing arousal can lead to a stronger positive customer response. Conversely, in an unpleasant environment one should not increase arousal levels as this would move customers towards the Distressing region. Eg Loud fast beat music would increase the stress levels of shoppers trying to push their way through crowds in a mall. In such situations the information load of the environment should be lowered.