The algebra of emotions in concept development

1
'The algebra of emotions in concept development
optimization'

• Howard Moskowitz
• Moskowitz Jacobs Inc.
• Samuel Rabino
• Northeastern University
• Jacqueline Beckley
• The Understanding Insight Group

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Why emotions in concepts?The changing focus

• Traditional marketing and consumer research deals
  with the 5 Ps
• Price
• Place
• Product
• Increasingly business is recognizing that we need
  to bond with products
• A word where products are cheap
• Brand names arent necessarily working
• Competition is fierce

3
Perhaps we should excite emotionsThis might make
a stronger connection

• Instead of communicating benefits and features we
  should communicate emotions
• But ..how
• A lot of what we know about emotions comes from
  clinical psychology

4
The traditional strategyAsk lots of questions to
understand emotion

• Consumer researchers often come from a sociology
  or business background
• Interested in percent of people who behave a
  certain way
• The background leads them to ask questions
• So questions could be about emotion as well as
  about anything else

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One strategy profiles statements

• Present ideas to consumers
• Ask consumers to rate the ideas, one at a time on
  a set of scales
• Happy vs Sad
• Exhilarated vs Subdued
• Assumption consumers know the emotional
  content of ideas
• Is this true?

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Response to emotion elementsUsing experimental
design

• Lets be more direct
• Create concepts having known components
• Use experimental design
• Systematic variation
• Mix and match components in known ways
• Some of these elements have emotion
• At least we believe them to have emotion
• How do the elements perform
• Any special pattern emerging with the emotion
  elements

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Examples of silos elementsThese will be
mixed/matched by design
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Example of experimental designFour
silos/buckets, 9 options/siloOr silo absent from
concept (value of 0)
9
Respondent invited to participateEncouraged to
select an interesting topic
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So..what did we find?

• Can we find responses to emotion elements
• What about segments (groups of like-minded
  people)
• What about individual people
• Emotion as a person/stimulus emergent response

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Emotion elements dont do well .. or poorlyThese
are the elements in yellow italicized
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Looking for emotions in segments

• Maybe we can divide respondents into homogeneous
  groups
• And .. Maybe one of these groups really responds
  (resonates) to emotion!!!

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Segmentation by patterns ..no emotion groupNo
group respondents strongly to emotion elements
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It must be at the individual person level

• Lets look at one element (e.g., C1) .. A reward
  as a snack or a treat
• Do people who are positive to this emotion
  element also respond positively to other emotion
  elements?

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Lets look at responses to a specific emotion
element (C1)
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How emotion elements performTwo groups based
on reaction to C1A reward as a snack or as a
treat
Respondents positive to C1 tend to be slightly
positive to other emotion elements Respondents
negative to C1 tend to be slightly negative to
other emotion elements
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What we have found thus far

• Emotion elements are weaker than elements which
  present product features
• Emotion elements tend to be generally weak
• Product features may be weak or strong ..
• There is no segment that is emotion driven
• We can identify individuals strongly positive or
  negative to an emotion statement
• Slight, not strong, generalization to other
  emotion elements
• Positives to one emotion element are positive to
  other emotion elements
• Negatives to one emotion element are negative to
  other emotion elements

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One final topicWhat other elements work with
emotion elements

• So far weve concentrated on emotion elements
• But what if we want to build a product concept
  featuring a specific emotion element
• What other elements work with that element?
• What works with those people who are positive to
  the emotion element
• What works with those people who are negative to
  the emotion element

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The notion of scenarios

• A scenario is a set of data with one element held
  constant
• Lets filter all the data and work only with
  element C1
• A reward as a snack or a treat
• We reduce the 10,000 concepts to 905
• Now that we have only C1, lets then focus on
  those positive to C1 and negative to C1
• Further reduction from 905 to about 200-225
• Now what works

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Green.. Works strongly with C1OrangeWorks
poorly with C1
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A suggested first approximation

• We havent found emotion in concepts
• Emotion may be emergent coming from
• A specific element
• A specific mind-set of consumers
• But not a segment
• There is no segment that appears to be sensitive
  to emotions
• A momentary response when the right consumer and
  the right element come together
• There is no general rule to tell us which element
  works to drive this emotion response
• People positive to one emotion element may be
  indifferent to others