Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

Research for Marketing Decisions

PGP - Term IV (2022 – 2023)
Stimulus-organism-response (SOR) Model and Consumer Emotion

Stimuli Organism Response

Moderator

• Stimuli are known as Independent Variables (7Ps), whereas responses are known as
Dependent variables (Outcome variables). Organisms are known as mediating variables.
Independent, Depending and Mediating variables are technical terminologies used in
Marketing Research/Business Consulting activities.
• For developing any hypothesis, we need to have the application of SOR model. For example,
the hypothesis Advertisement (Stimuli) has a positive impact on Sales (Response). We will
discuss in more details during hypothesis development class.
• Consumer Emotion is an important Organism that impacts consumer behavior significantly
(arguably, 70-80% behavior). Consumer emotion has two dimensions – Arousal and Pleasure
(refer the figure below). Both arousal and pleasure range from lowest (negative) to highest
(positive). Arousal and pleasure can go together. For example, the emotional state
“excitement” comprises of both arousal and pleasure at highest levels, where as “depression”
has lowest levels of both arousal and pleasure.
• Managerial example: Managers can control consumer emotion by controlling stimuli. For
example, our marketing research shows that by playing low arousal positive pleasure music
(e.g., romantic music; Bollywood music) retailers can make consumers happier which in turn
results in higher spending and shopping (Das et al., 2020).
Dimensions of Consumer Affect/Emotion (Russell, Weiss,
and Mendelsohn, 1989).