OPINION14 October 2009

Customers have emotions too

Perhaps there are a few marketeers out there who still believe that customers only ever make rational decisions but for most of us perhaps a little late, we are finally asking the question, how do our clients and customers feel about us?

Whether its aggravation at the late running train or a general sense of happiness with the mood music playing in the grocery store, emotions are a great lever, determining what we remember from an experience and influencing how we behave in the future.

The evidence from psychology seems clear, you cannot separate emotion from rationality and you cannot deny its importance in consumer decision-making. For instance, through the Neuroscience work of Antonio Damasio emotions are seen to be ‘in the loop of reason’; in other words without emotion you cannot have rationality. In economics Professor Daniel Kahneman has really put emotions to the fore; indeed, to quote, ‘the rational model is one in which the beliefs and the desires are supposed to be determined. We were real believers in decision analysis 30 years ago, and now we must admit that decision analysis hasn’t held up.’ Shocking stuff to those who always thought clients and consumers were automatic robots juggling various combinations of price and product quality.

What are emotions for anyway but as a means of learning, to tell us what is good for our well-being.

So isn’t it time for market research to step up to the plate and measure those emotions? Is it right to build models of satisfaction, recommendation and spend and not include at least some understanding of emotional effect. What is the return on emotion anyway and can we design for a specific emotional response? It seems that for many companies we might well have run out of choices in terms of manipulating and competitively differentiating on the basis of the standard 4Ps so perhaps embedding a little emotion might go a long way.

Steven Walden

@RESEARCH LIVE

3 Comments

David Howlett, Brandphonics

15 years ago

Very pertinent points. The fact is that most research continues to investigate liking and propensity to buy measures in the belief that an overall construct of this type does help predict trial and repeat purchase behaviour. With virtually all product categories progressing to levels where every product is fit for purpose (and COULD be liked or bought), we argue that these measures, on their own, can be too blunt. Consonance between the emotional message of a brand and the actual experience of product consumption can be a very important determinant of repeat purchase. Products must live up to their brand communications in emotional and not just functional ways.

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Andre Golard

15 years ago

Working with neurological patients, Antonio Damasio showed that without emotion we cannot decide. Fine, but how do you leverage emotions to sell products? One way to do this comes from experiments conducted by Baba Shiv and Alexander Fedorikhin. When they enrolled participants for a study they told them this was about memory. Not so. Here is the setup: participants are given either two or seven numbers to remember, and are sent to another room to test their recollection. On the way is a table with a choice of a bowl of fruit and a piece of chocolate cake. Which will they choose, and will remembering numbers make a difference? Strangely, trying to remember more numbers decreases our self control. We now know why. Our prefrontal cortex, crucial to our rational decision making, can only hold a small amount of information. It roughly can hold seven plus or minus two “items” at the same time. The result: when our rational brain is busy remembering numbers, it is less able to control our emotions. We go for the fattening piece of cake. So, if you want to make (or you want your customers to make) rational decisions, keep things simple. Keep your desk clear, your product display neat and simple. If on the other hand you are trying to sell triple cream cheese, create clutter. For more detail see http://www.thinkingerr0rs.com/?p=151 and http://www.thinkingerr0rs.com/?p=135

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Steven Walden

15 years ago

Thanks Andre. Interesting points. I think you agree then that rational and emotional are intertwined. In your example, perhaps we go for the fattening cake not because we are less able to control our emotions but because the selection of the cake is in fact goal congruent. So, we have a comparatively heavier task to perform, I say let’s eat it ‘I deserve this cake’ or ‘I need a necessary distraction from a difficult task’. For me however there is a lot to be said for creating the right mood that impacts on how you perceive in the decision-making process. So a nice piece of chocolate cake can affect your mood, delivering a pre-disposition towards one type of ‘rational selection’. There are other experiments, I believe, where complex decision-making actually focuses the mind on the detailed negative things to avoid i.e., need for more detail! How do you leverage emotions to sell products? For me it is a question of understanding what appraisals lead to certain emotional reactions; which requires some research work to understand that emotional environment in the first place! Leveraging emotions for us is not as simple as you suggest. Different emotions are related to different experiences, products and meanings. So to refer to your create clutter comment, the challenge here is, how do you associate the emotions evoked with the appraisals you want (i.e., I want to buy), it is not just about clutter or simplicity per se. For instance, in the work we have done with a healthcare client we found that the emotional environment for a product was about ‘avoiding negative emotions’. The desire was actually to increase information i.e., imparting information that gave consumers confidence in the product. Anyway, just my opinion...

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