Mehrabian and Russell argue that approach-avoidance behaviors in physical and social environments are determined by pleasure, arousal, and dominance. However, consumer research has not provided convincing evidence for the role of all three affective variables, largely because researchers used ad hoc settings, which failed to provide a theoretically coherent array of test environments. This study's authors used the Behavioral Perspective Model to examine the relationship between the affective and behavioral variables. Consumers (N = 561) responded to stimuli describing consumer situations, yielding data on 4,488 cases. The role of pleasure, arousal, and dominance as determinants of consumer behavior is demonstrated, and Mehrabian and Russell's finding of an important interaction between pleasure and arousal is confirmed. The importance of theoretically based research on consumer environments is substantiated, and dominance is shown to be a predictable response of consumers across relatively open (consumer-controllable) and relatively closed (marketer-controlled) settings.
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