Marketing Pain: How Culturally Framed Discomfort Shapes Consumer Value Perception and Brand Positioning Across Markets

Introduction: This research examined the effects of emotional sensitivity and discomfort-based advertising on brand trust, brand attitude, and purchase intention among Eastern and Western consumers. While emotional appeals are widely studied, empirical evidence on culturally moderated responses to discomfort-inducing advertising remains limited.

Methods: An experimental design was used, consisting of 200 participants, with a 4 (advertising frame: control, social shame, fear, neutral) × 2 (culture: Eastern, Western) design, including manipulation checks, reliability measures, and focus group discussions to validate findings. The results of MANOVA indicated that advertising frame had significant effects on brand trust (F(3,192) = 506.36, p < .001, η 2 p = 0.888), brand attitude (F(3,192) = 447.88, p < .001, η 2 p = 0.875), and purchase intention (F(3,192) = 501.35, p < .001, η 2 p The results of mediation analyses performed with the help of the Process showed that emotional sensitivity had a positive impact on brand trust (B = 0.453, p = 0.001), brand attitude (B = 0.478, p = 0.001) as well as purchase intention (B = 0.900, p = 0.001), but these relationships were partially mediated by the perceived value (indirect effects: BT = 0.436, BA = 0.382, PI = 0.09.

Results: These results were supported and elaborated by focus group discussions that traced how participants collectively interpreted and debated the discomfort-based adverts in their everyday cultural terms. Focus groups, rather than individual interviews, were used to foreground the social negotiation of cultural norms around shame and fear, allowing culturally specific patterns of emotional discomfort to emerge from group interaction.

Conclusion: In general, discomfort-based advertising greatly improves brand results, whose effects are moderated by cultural context and mediated by perceived value. In theory, the research will build on Fear Appeal and Cultural Dimension theories by combining emotional sensitivity and perceived value in cross-cultural situations. In practise, it offers the principles of culturally-specific emotional advertising in order to increase brand engagement and consumer responsiveness.

Keywords: Culturally framed discomfort, consumer value perception, brand positioning, marketing pain, fear appeal, emotional sensitivity.

1. INTRODUCTION

The recent years have been marked by a number of high-profile brand crises instigated by culturally insensitive or emotionally miscalculated marketing campaigns, proving that the risks of poorly-calibrated emotional appeals in different markets are quite high. With the growing trend of brands basing their communication strategies on personalisation, immersion, and emotive response, cultural interpretation of discomfort has become a strategic necessity, not a creative option (Sriramesh & Yeo, 2024). The emotional marketing strategies aimed at creating a powerful psychological response may either enhance brand engagement or cause consumer backlash, reputation, and brand equity loss when used inappropriately in relation to cultural expectations (Shukri & Hamid, 2025). Therefore, the perception of discomfort-based marketing messages by consumers of various cultural backgrounds is the key to the sustainability of the global brands and competitive positioning.

In the current market that is becoming more globalised, it is important to comprehend the way consumers value and place brands in the market to market effectively. Marketing pain is one of the emerging factors that has affected these perceptions, or the culturally constructed discomfort that consumers feel in reaction to marketing messages, product offers, or brand experiences (Sharma et al., 2023). The pain associated with marketing can also have a great influence on consumer assessment of product value and the brand positioning strategies (Korde & Mahmood, 2025). Despite the extensive studies conducted on the individual emotional appeal in advertising effectiveness, i.e., fear, guilt, and shame, there is a lack of empirical studies that combine the mechanisms of discomfort in one conceptual framework of marketing pain. More to the point, there are few systematic cross-cultural comparisons that analyse the interpretation and reaction of Eastern and Western consumers to such discomfort-based marketing strategies. The current literature, such as (Lopez & Monroy, 2023; Sharma et al., 2023; and Togans & McConnell, 2025), gives some background information about emotional persuasion yet fails to address how all these emotional discomfort cues can influence consumer value perception in different cultural settings. Such absence of integrative and comparative evidence poses a disabling gap in cross-cultural marketing research.

This gap is especially relevant to the modern marketing setting, in which global brands are aimed at culturally diverse audiences at the same time via digital platforms. In the absence of empirically based knowledge on the framing of culturally sensitive discomfort, marketers will run the risk of launching emotionally provocative campaigns that can be positive in one place and negative in another. Thus, creating a systematic knowledge of the cross-cultural framework of marketing pain is necessary in creating globally responsive and culturally sensitive brand positioning strategies.

By relying on the studies in emotional persuasion and adverse affective framing, marketing pain can be operationally described as the intentional application of discomfort-inducing cues in advertisements to cause psychological tension leading to behavioural or cognitive change. Although it is related to fear appeals, guilt appeals, and shame appeals, marketing pain is more extensive since it can include any emotionally disturbing frame that creates discomfort, such as social pressure, fear, threat, and negative expectancy (Mas et al., 2024). The previous literature indicates that shame enhances cognitive processing (So et al., 2024) and fear enhances compliance (Talebi et al., 2024), all of which are discomfort-related mechanisms. As such, the application of shame, fear, and fear-based cues as proxies is consistent with the existing evidence that these affective states are unique but convergent discomfort framing. Marketing pain in this work can be defined as this integrated pain-creating strategy, and the cross-cultural effect of marketing pain on brand positioning can be examined.

The particular issue is the interaction of marketing pain with consumer cognition and emotion in the perceived value. Although the brands tend to increase consumer satisfaction and loyalty, when the marketing strategies inadvertently cause discomfort, the objectives are hampered (Popovich et al., 2025). Moreover, such effects might be mitigated by cultural differences. As an example, Eastern consumers, who tend to value collectivism, harmony, and indirect communication, might perceive marketing discomfort differently than Western consumers, who are usually more individualistic and willing to see aggressive or confrontational messages (Sun, 2025). The choice of Eastern vs. Western consumers is a pragmatic cultural construct as opposed to a definite or essentialist dichotomy. Although modern studies acknowledge the existence of cultural convergence, significant variations in emotional processing and advertising response still exist between these general cultural groups. The Eastern cultures are also typically more interdependent in self-construal, socially evaluation sensitive, and shame- or norm-based responsive, and the Western cultures are more independent in self-construal and more tolerant of direct or confrontational messages (Mas et al., 2024; Patel & Dhurkari, 2025). In this paper, the Eastern-Western comparison is thus used to investigate whether the discomfort framing varies in different consumer groups of different cultures, as previous cross-cultural studies of advertising have found. Notably, the framework is applied sparingly, recognising its shortcomings, but it provides an empirically based analysis of cultural differences in reactions to discomfort-based marketing.

The study is timely and required since the brands are spreading into culturally diverse markets where emotional responses to advertising, particularly discomfort-based messages, may differ significantly and have a strong strategic implication. The wrong interpretation of such reactions may decrease brand equity, cause backlash, or cause reputational harm in the long term. With more domineering forms of marketing being personalised, emotional, and immersive, brands are increasingly walking the fine line between meaningful engagement and inadvertently causing psychological uneasiness (Alexander et al., 2025). However, the scholarly literature provides very scant information regarding the way the different cultures decipher discomfort cues or the role of discomfort cues in core positioning outcomes like trust, attitude, and intention to purchase. This lack of evidence leaves marketers working in risky situations with no empirically based models on how to design culturally sensitive messages. Thus, the research seeks to offer strong cross-cultural explanations of how discomfort framing influences brand positioning and explain how the concept of perceived value mediates these effects.

In contrast to the past studies where emotional appeals are independent variables of persuasion, this study is the first to conceptualise marketing pain as a framework of discomfort and empirically test its cross-cultural implications. The study offers a new multidimensional approach to both theory and practise in global marketing strategy by concurrently exploring emotional discomfort cues, perceived consumer value, and brand positioning results between Eastern and Western consumer groups.

The research has a number of contributions. In theory, it builds on consumer value theory and cross-cultural marketing research by incorporating the concept of marketing pain as a predictor of perceived value. Contextually, it offers information that is specific to both the Eastern and Western markets, bringing out the cultural moderation influences on consumer perceptions. The methodological approach of the study is a rigorous experimental design and a focus group approach, which enables the manipulation of marketing stimuli and a detailed qualitative understanding. The analysis of the experimental data is conducted with the help of MANOVA, which enables the revelation of the mean differences and the effects of the multi-group. The study empirically creates actionable evidence of the impact of marketing pain on brand positioning strategies in culturally diverse markets, which can be applied in global marketing management.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Theoretical Framework

The Fear Appeal Theory, firstly developed by (Janis & Feshbach, 1953), is that messages with fear-inducing content may influence behaviour change when people believe that there is a threat and a response to the threat that can be taken. Fear appeals are frequently applied in marketing to create a sense of fear, compliance, or immediate action (Mas et al., 2024; Sobol & Giroux, 2023; van Breda et al., 2023). The theory is also directly pertinent to the current study because one of the conditions of the experiment involves a fear frame aimed at inducing marketing discomfort. Fear appeal theory has, however, been criticised due to its inconsistent predictive ability across cultures and because it simplifies the response of emotion by suggesting that fear works equally with all consumers (Talebi et al., 2024). The given critique is addressed in the current research through a discussion of whether there is a difference between Eastern and Western cultural contexts in terms of fear-based marketing pain and the identification of culturally specific responses based on both experimental and focus group data.

According to the second theory, the Cultural Dimensions Theory by Hofstede (Hofstede, 1980), societies are different in terms of various cultural dimensions, including individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance, which determine values, communication patterns, and psychological processing (Patel & Dhurkari, 2025; Priporas et al., 2025). This theory guides the interest of the study in the culturally framed discomfort by establishing why Eastern consumers (who are generally collectivistic) can be more responsive to social shame signals, whereas Western consumers (who are generally individualistic) can be more responsive to fear-based or neutral messages (Mas et al., 2024). Although it has been widely used, Hofstede has been criticised as being fixed, too generalised, and lacking strength in terms of explaining emotion-based marketing reactions (Priporas et al., 2025). The research is valuable because it offers a more detailed and empirical evidence of the interaction of emotional advertising frames with modern cultural processes and, therefore, a more comprehensive interpretation of cross-cultural consumer discomfort.

In order to develop a general framework, this paper combines the cultural tightness-looseness theory (Gelfand et al., 2011), which describes the difference between societies that have tight norms and low tolerance of deviance and those that are loose in terms of emotional appraisal and reaction to marketing discomfort. The combination of Fear Appeal Theory, Hofstede dimensions, and cultural tightness-looseness makes the framework connect the emotional advertising frames to the culturally-regulated emotional responses, which can be considered as the complete explanation of the discomfort of cross-cultural marketing and the responsiveness of consumers.

2.2. Conceptual Distinction Between Marketing Pain and Traditional Emotional Appeal Theories

The marketing pain concept (also known as marketing discomfort) is an extension of the conventional theories of emotional appeal by offering a wider and integrative approach to negative emotional persuasion (van Breda et al., 2023). Classical theories, including Fear Appeal Theory, the contribution of Irving Janis and Seymour Feshbach, are mainly concerned with fear as a single emotional stimulus that is intended to induce behaviour change based on the perceived threat and coping strategies. Equally, shame and guilt appeals highlight certain negative emotional stimuli that are meant to shape consumer attitudes and behaviours based on social judgment or moral responsibility (Talebi et al., 2024).

Marketing pain, on the other hand, is a multidimensional construct that incorporates various discomfort-creating emotional cues in marketing communication. Instead of analysing fear, shame, or guilt as individual persuasive forces, marketing pain conceptualises discomfort as a complex psychological experience caused by exposure to emotionally stressful marketing messages (Kastanakis et al., 2026). This integrative view acknowledges that consumers are likely to have mixed emotional responses, such as social pressure, threat perception, embarrassment, and anxiety, when they are exposed to persuasive marketing stimuli.

The other unique feature of marketing pain is its high focus on the cultural understanding of discomfort. The conventional emotional appeal theories tend to presume that there are universal emotional reactions to persuasive communication (Talebi et al., 2024). Nevertheless, cultural frameworks play a major role in the way consumers perceive and respond to discomfort-based advertising. As an example, the cultural dimensions suggested by (Hofstede, 1980) indicate that collectivist cultures are more likely to be sensitive to social harmony and reputational assessment, and thus they are more sensitive to discomfort signals that are based on shame or social framing. On the other hand, individualistic cultures might react more to the threat-based or fear-oriented communication that focuses on individual implications (Priporas et al., 2025).

Moreover, the marketing pain concept also takes into consideration the idea of cultural tightness-looseness theory offered by (Gelfand et al., 2011), which describes the impact of tolerance to norm deviation in society on emotional appraisal (Gelfand et al., 2011). Societies with high levels of social normativity and intolerance to deviation may be more sensitive to discomfort-based marketing, and hence culturally loose societies may be more tolerant of emotionally provocative advertisements messages.

Thus, marketing pain is distinguished by three aspects as compared to classical emotional appeal theories. First, it follows an integrative emotional strategy instead of appealing to a single emotion. Second, it focuses on culturally ingrained sources of discomfort interpretations. Third, it presents a comprehensive description of the combination of various discomfort cues that determine consumer perceived value and brand positioning results. The current research has the potential to further the development of cross-cultural marketing theory and emotional persuasion studies because it defines marketing pain as a conceptual construct.

2.3. Discomfort Framing and Brand Positioning

The current literature offers useful information about the emotional impact on consumer behaviour, but it has some evident gaps in the area of discomfort framing and its involvement in cross-cultural brand positioning. (So et al., 2024) proved that shame can lead to better ad recall and better product attitudes, especially in high self-monitors, but their study does not go further to cultural comparisons and strategic brand positioning, which makes it less generalisable. (Yıldız & Kara, 2025) also emphasised the effectiveness of emotional narratives in enhancing brand trust, yet their one-sided approach to the subject matter that focuses solely on positive messages leaves a gap in answering the question of how messages based on discomfort work across cultures. (Yang et al., 2025) demonstrate that negative design signals are more powerful in emotion response but less beneficial in the longevity of brand interest. Their neurophysiological results are limited to product design instead of advertising frames and do not investigate the outcomes in terms of culture and positioning. Research on negative attitudes during a crisis, including the study by (Rahman & Chakraborty, 2025) on brand forgiveness or the study by (Jang et al., 2025) on consumer regret, offers applicable insights into emotions but is not related to discomfort-based advertising and cross-cultural implications. Lastly, (Garg et al., 2025) demonstrate the power of emotional appeals in enhancing brand relationships in the context of COVID-19, but they only discuss the positive emotions, not the discomfort framing, which is based on negative emotional cues, and how it can be applied to brand positioning in various cultural settings.

Emotional reactions to advertising vary in cultures, not only in terms of collectivism and individualism. The cultural tightness-looseness theory proposes that different societies have different levels of social norms and toleration of deviant behaviour. In culturally tight societies, discomfort signals like shame and social disapproval are more sensitive to individuals, whereas in culturally loose societies, individuals are less sensitive, because behavioural flexibility enables individuals to act more flexibly (Gelfand et al., 2011). These differences are also explained by the self-construal theory. People who have interdependent self-construals (which are commonly linked to Eastern cultures) are more concerned about group harmony and social relations, becoming more sensitive to the socially evaluative discomfort cues. On the other hand, people of independent self-construals, which are typically associated with Western societies, focus on personal autonomy and can be more responsive to fear-inducing or threat-related messages (So et al., 2024).

Taken together, these studies highlight how research that specifically examines the discomfort framing in advertising and determines its efficacy in cross-cultural settings and brand positioning situations is urgently needed. Therefore, this research hypothesises that;

H1: Brand trust, brand attitude, and purchase intention of consumers vary based on the level of discomfort framing in advertisements

H2: Brand trust, brand attitude, and purchase intention of consumers differ between Eastern and Western Consumers

2.4. Impact of Emotional Sensitivity on Brand Trust, Brand Attitude, and Purchase Intention

Emotional sensitivity is the extent to which consumers detect, interpret, and react to marketing communication messages that contain emotional appeals, both positive and discomfort-stimulating messages (Garg et al., 2025). It mirrors the vulnerability of a person to emotional stimulation and the severity of their affective reactions (Li et al., 2021). Based on the intensity theory (Averill, 1980) and research on consumer emotional susceptibility (Srisuk et al., 2023; Zaman et al., 2025), emotionally vulnerable consumers have greater and more direct responses to advertising frames, which, consequently, influence brand assessments, trust, and purchase intentions. The construct enables the study to measure the extent to which the emotional responsiveness variations affect consumer perceptions and behavioural consequences.

The literature has a common point in its emphasis on the increased significance of emotional sensitivity in the development of consumer reactions and, therefore, the brand positioning in contemporary markets. (Srisuk et al., 2023) emphasise the role of social media interaction in terms of likes, shares, and comments as indicators of emotional responsiveness, which directly increases brand-consumer relations and brand equity. Even though the research is based on digital interactions as opposed to particular emotional frames, it shows that emotionally sensitive behaviours have a considerable influence on the perception and positioning of brands in the mental schema of consumers. On the same note, (Zaman et al., 2025) emphasise the role of nostalgia proneness and brand trust in increasing the level of emotional involvement, which, in turn, increases brand engagement. This means that emotional sensitivity based on memory and trust enhances brand positioning through stronger psychological attachment, but the research does not address discomfort and negative emotional stimuli.

(Gao & Shen, 2024) also demonstrate that brand attitude and brand-self connection are emotional processes that affect brand loyalty via sensory brand experiences, confirming the fact that brand positioning is based on emotionally evoked experiences. Their results indicate that a brand that develops emotional sensitivity by having multi-sensory cues can take a more dominant and desirable place in the minds of consumers. In contrast to these optimistic-emotion schemas, (Kučinskas, 2024) discloses that promotional offers may adversely modify the perceived brand personality traits, which proves that emotional sensitivity also contributes to the inconsistencies or negative changes in brand identity. This brings about the point that emotionally sensitive consumers are not only responsive to positive signals but also to signals that can undermine brand positioning. All these studies demonstrate that emotional sensitivity, whether it is elicited by social media, nostalgia, sensory stimuli, or even promotions, has a significant impact on brand perceptions and positioning. Nevertheless, none of them focus on discomfort framing or cross-cultural differences, which is a major gap that the current research fills. Hence, this study hypothesised that;

H3: Emotional sensitivity positively and significantly impacts the brand trust, brand attitude, and purchase intention

2.5. Perceived Value as Mediator

The perceived value is a very important mediator between emotional sensitivity and brand positioning, as it converts the emotional reactions of consumers into brand worth and relevance evaluations. The theory of perceived value states that the emotional and affective elements, other than the functional utility, play an important role in influencing the overall value judgment (Ragab et al., 2024). Based on the S-O-R model, emotional sensitivity is the S-O-R Stimulus that causes internal appraisal or Organism responses that are cognitively and emotionally evaluated, which is in line with the appraisal theory. These affective evaluations have an impact on the brand value, relational value, and engagement perceptions of consumers. As an illustration, perceived brand equity is strengthened by socially and emotionally relevant content on social media, and brand engagement is supported by nostalgia-based trust (Zaman et al., 2025). On the same note, positive emotional reactions associated with sensory brand experiences lead to brand loyalty and positive attitudes (Gao & Shen, 2024).

According to this, (Srisuk et al., 2023) show that emotionally resonant social media communication has a positive impact on brand equity, which implies that emotional sensitivity increases perceived value in relational and affective dimensions. Likewise, (Zaman et al., 2023) demonstrate that nostalgia and trust-based emotional involvement enhance brand engagement, which means that positive emotional reactions contribute to perceived value, which supports brand positioning. (Gao & Shen, 2024) emphasise that sensory brand experiences drive loyalty through brand attitudes, which also promotes the idea that emotional experiences contribute to the perception of value and, therefore, brand positioning. With the perceived value being framed as the process connecting emotional sensitivity to strategic brand positioning, this study fills a theoretical gap, focusing on the role of affective consumer experiences in influencing brand equity and positioning outcomes in culturally diverse settings.

H4: Perceived value mediates the relationship of emotional sensitivity with brand trust, brand attitude, and purchase intention

2.6. Conceptual Framework

Fig. (1) shows the conceptual framework for the study. It shows that the emotional sensitivity towards Ads influences brand trust, brand attitude, and purchase intention, consistent with the study of (Srisuk et al., 2023; and Zaman et al., 2025). Perceived value is the mediator between this relationship, as explained by (Ragab et al., 2024) from the perspective of the theory of perceived value. The cross-cultural comparison is conducted in this study as well between Eastern and Western cultures.