Framing Effect and Emotions: Analysis of their Impact on Decision-Making Processes

Abstract

This thesis starts from the awareness that when human beings make a choice, they act not only rationally but also and above all, irrationally. This paper aims to analyze how the framing effect and emotions, which are two crucial factors that compose human irrationality, impact the decision-making process underlying their usage in marketing strategies. Initially, through a theoretical approach, the two phenomena and their implication in companies’ general and communication strategies will represent the study object. Then, the thesis will present the case of an Italian company that, when starting using framing effect and emotional marketing techniques (marketing strategy that considers the impact of emotions on decision-making processes) together, has gradually more than doubled its turnover in 3 years. In the end, there will be an experiment on the framing effect to understand whether a landing with positive rather than negative wording has more impact in the launch of a commercial offer of an Italian business consultancy firm; namely, it will be A/B testing. The general purpose is to demonstrate the importance of customer profiling from a psychological perspective. Also, it can make the company understand that a strategy that focuses on the person and its needs rather than the product, in the current historical era, can increase the company performance.