Examining gender and cultural influences on customer emotions

Understanding consumer emotional experiences on e-commerce platforms is essential for businesses striving to enhance customer engagement and personalisation. Recent research has demonstrated that these experiences are more intricate and diverse than previously examined, encompassing a wider range of discrete emotions and spanning multiple-dimensional scales. This study examines how gender and cultural differences shape these complex emotional responses, revealing significant variations between male and female consumers across all sentiment, valence, arousal, and dominance scores. Additionally, clear cultural distinctions emerge, with Western and Eastern consumers displaying markedly different emotional behaviours across the larger spectrum of emotions, including admiration, amusement, approval, caring, curiosity, desire, disappointment, optimism, and pride. Furthermore, the study uncovers a critical interaction between gender and culture in shaping consumer emotions. Notably, gender-based emotional disparities are more pronounced in Western cultures than in Eastern ones, an aspect that has been largely overlooked in previous research. From a theoretical perspective, this study advances the understanding of gender and cultural variations in online consumer behaviour by integrating insights from neuroscience theories and Hofstede cultural dimension model. Practically, it offers valuable guidance for businesses, equipping them with the tools to more accurately interpret customer feedback, refine sentiment and emotional analysis models, and develop personalised marketing strategies.