Stress and Brand Choices During Purchasing Process in Mexico

Abstract

In recent years marketing researchers have address the influence of stress in the consumer behavior. There is a recognizable need to advance in the development of theoretical and methodological bases for investigating stress and brand choices. Little is known about the changes consumers experience during a stress episode, how they respond to this changes, and how stress affects their evaluation process during purchase and brand choice. Previous efforts to study consumer behavior and stress addressed theoretical and substantive issues that are time-dependant. These studies focus on 1) adaptative decision skills Greenhaus (1999), compulsive consumption and materialistic attitudes Rindfleisch et al. (1997); Roberts et al. (1993), changes in established purchasing patterns, including brand and store preferences Andreason (1984), Lee et al. (2001). But they do not show how stress, affect present patterns of consumer behavior and brand choices. Moreover there is no empirical evidence of studies in this topic in Mexico. Increase in violence, economic crisis, etc, have escalated the level of stress that Mexicans have been dealing with; so it becomes important to study the effects that stress has in Mexican’s consumer behavior. Previous research in U.S.A., theorized that when consumers experience stressful life changes, they have the tendency to stay with the same brands, this election is viewed as a coping strategy in response to maintain the equilibrium in their lives Andreason (1984). Although, there is evidence that in the case of consumption-induced by stress, this election does not work as a coping strategy, rather, this type of behavior is a reflection that stress has affected the emotional resources, interfering with the capability of considering the evaluation of new brands Moschis (2007). This study will explore the link between stress and the development of brand choices in the purchasing process in Mexico. Work is needed to assess how specific consumption-coping strategies across cultures; rather than inferring that they preexist in different cultural contexts given the complexity of the topic. The authors will present the conceptual framework that incorporates the types of variables and relationships that are relevant and open a discussion of the pertinent methods of analysis and data collection.

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