Emotional Branding and Dissonance
Dissonance in customers occurs due to a predetermined commitment to a chosen alternative which leads the customer to compromise with the attractive features of the alternative which has not been chosen. This is something which is not consistent with the desire for those features. Hence it can be said that the decision which are habitual and limited and do not include much of the customer involvement will not produce post purchase dissonance as in such decisions one hardly consider any attractive features in an alternative brand that do not exist in the selected brand. For example, a customer who has an aroused set of five brands of milk could consider each of them equivalent on relevant attributes in terms of its quality except price and therefore, always purchase the brand which is least in terms of price. Such purchase is habitual and involves limited decision making and hence would not produce post purchase dissonance. It can be said that the cognitive decision is the result of the compromise that a customer has to make; hence it is normal in purchase decisions. Cognitive dissonance leads to a feeling of uneasiness in customers about their beliefs or actions which they tend to change by adjusting their attitude to fit into the behaviour. The case of post purchase dissonance is the result of an attitude change which is the result of an action or behaviour. The information creating dissonance always follows a purchase, and is considered as the main contributor that socialise consumers to change their attitude towards the decision in order to make a balance between the dissonance felt and the consonance which arises due to purchase behaviour. The basic ways of dissonance formation can be summarized as: