4: The Paths to Emotion
The author suggests that the basic goal of a company should be to provide greater value to customers than its competitors. If it succeeds in doing so, it will win their business - and receive the financial objectives of profitability and growth.
Most firms can describe the way in which they provide functional benefits to their customers, but fewer can define the emotional benefits they offer. Emotions are intangible, experienced in different degrees by different people, and generally more difficult to speak about or to conceive a clear way to deliver.
The Less-Traveled Path: Supported Emotions
Historically, associated emotions have been the primary focus of generating emotions in customers, and little attention has been paid to the supported emotions, which have largely been accidental. Products were designed to be serviceable, or to have quality related to their durability, precision, or other functional requirement. Customers got the sense that a product that felt heavier was of greater quality than another - but a product was heavy because of the material it was made of, not because the maker realized weight would evoke a sense of quality.
Because most companies have failed to consider supported emotions, there is not a body of knowledge that can be drawn upon. This is in stark contrast to associated emotions - there are many volumes of information and significant research into advertising, but virtually nothing about delivering emotional benefits from the product itself.
The author mentions electric vehicles as a product that has pushed emotion to the forefront. People are simply not adopting fully-electric cars because they have little confidence in their power and safety. It doesn't help that, to improve performance, the manufacturers are making the vehicles out of lighter materials to conserve energy and extend their range.
Instead of competing with the emotions people feel about their traditional, gas-powered cars, manufactures such as Nissan are seeking to define an entirely different set of emotions for people to associate their car: driving an electric vehicle means working to achieve a cleaner and quieter world, and users should feel proud, passionate, optimistic, and responsible ... and more importantly, they should feel different and better than those who still drive old-fashion gasoline vehicles.
(EN: This may be stretching it. I can conceive that the physical attributes of the cabin can make someone feel safe and protected because of the way the materials look and feel. But I do not conceive how the physical attributes of an electric car make a person feel optimistic. What visual, auditory, or tactile sensation evokes that emotion? My sense is that these are associated rather than supported emotions.)
The author suggests that advertising can leverage supported emotions, but leaves it at that. (EN: if an advertisement can show a product, the viewer can emotionally respond vicariously, as he is seeing the actual product through the camera's eye ... but likely he needs to do more to provide an example.)
Supported emotions are stronger and more authentic - they are conveyed by things that a person can perceive through their senses, not that they have to imagine because of what they have been shown through a medium they understand to be artificial. They are, in effect, "real" emotions created from first-person interaction with a real thing.
The Well-Traveled Path: Associated Emotions
The "well-traveled path" to emotion is closely aligned with advertising. Some advertising describes product features, in themselves or in comparison to competitors; some speaks of price; and others simply to get their name out there.
Still other advertisements seem to have nothing to do with the product, its features, or its price, and leave the audience a bit perplexed. These commercials attempt to create an emotion and associate it to the product.
Such advertisements are common for products whose benefits are either unknown or absent: consider the advertising by soda brands, which for years have been more about associating emotions to their product, rather than discussing their features or pricing.
The same type of advertising has been adopted by other products manufacturers, even when there are features that could be discussed, selling the feeling of a product was found to be more effective in getting customers excited about buying the product.
(EN: It's been suggested that, especially with the online medium, it is no longer necessary to tell people about your product's features and benefits in radio and television advertising. Get them excited, and people will find the detailed information themselves.)
Associated emotions are not necessarily bad, but they connote a promise that must be fulfilled by the product. If an advertisement suggests that using a product will cause people to feel happier, and actually using it does not evoke happiness, customers feel they have been misled or betrayed.
Consider advertisements for diet pills that show abnormally thin women - the functional implication is that they will actually do so, and the emotional portent is that it gives the customer hope. When the pill fails, functionally, and a sense of failure results, the customers claim to have been misled.
(EN: The author is implying, and perhaps rightly so, that the anger with which customers react to false advertising claims has more to do with their emotional disappointment than the functional failure of the product.)
The Value of Associated Emotions
While most of this book focuses on supported emotions, it is important to understand associated emotions, if only to recognize that they are not the same. They are "real" in that a person who sees words and images feels them, much in the way that the emotions a person feels when watching a movie are real, even though the sensory experience is entirely faked and contrived.
Even so, people form perceptions based on experience, and even faked experience has an impact, when there is no basis in fact. The author turns to an example of an experiment in which people were given two coats filled with identical feathers - but were told that one was "regular" down and the other was "alpine" down. Naturally, when asked about the emotions that they felt when wearing the coats, respondents had a remarkably stronger reaction to the "alpine" down coat - it made them feel distinctive, adventurous, proud, and powerful. All that emotion arose because of a single word.
The author speaks to a different experiment, involving pasta, in which the subjects were even told that the two products were exactly the same, customers described the one labeled "authentic" with more emotional terms than the "regular" one. The implication here is that even when people know there is no factual/physical difference, they cannot help feeling emotions when they hear a given word.
Neuroscience and Associated Emotions
(EN: I am dropping this entire section, because the author makes bold statements based on a flawed study. I don't think it's the author's intention to deceive, but he likely didn't fact-check. The research in question was junk - done by a group of academics who had no credentials in neurology, using a method that is unreliable, a tiny sample size, and based on the premises of phrenology rather than sound science. I don't doubt that neuroscience has much to contribute to our understanding of emotions and cognition - but the legitimate science is in its infancy, and there are too many desperate attempts by unqualified researchers to make discoveries. Perpetuating the disinformation is harmful to the discipline - and so, I've cut it out.)
The Love of Commodities
For luxury products with sufficient price elasticity, it is easier to make a case for considering emotion: a small increase in price will yield a small decrease in quantity demanded and the firm will likely remain profitable in aggregate. But where price is inelastic, and a small increase in price will result in a disproportionately large decrease in demand, firms are reluctant to do anything that will impact price.
However, this does not mean that emotion is irrelevant. Consider the market for soft drinks: the market leaders very closely match one another's prices, knowing that for some portion of the market, even the difference of a dime can make a significant difference to sales. However, the leading brands sell at a significant mark-up over generic cola.
On the same topic, the author speaks of conducting an informal experiment, which has been done many times over: when people taste products without knowing the brands, they respond in functional terms rather than emotional ones. (EN: Does this not deconstruct the author's previous argument that supported emotions are more important than associated ones? Brand is completely associated, and if any emotions were supported by product qualities, such as the distinctive flavor of the cola, it would be expressed even when the brand is not disclosed.)
It is also noted that in this experiment, participants reported some of the same emotions for all brands, indicating the emotional response was to the product rather than the brand - salsa made people feel "passionate" and cola made them feel "unhealthy." As such basic commodities are not entirely emotionless - which is significant in that the consumer might choose one snack food (regardless of brand) over another based on the emotions they associated to the commodity.
In the control group, where the brands were disclosed, consumers expressed a broader range of more specific emotions associated with particular brands and, for the most part, branded products elicited stronger emotions than generic ones. However, this was not universal, as one brand (Newman's Own) scored lower than the generic brand, which suggests that brand can gave a negative impact on emotion.
(EN: Here, I wonder about the survey instrument. The Newman's Own brand is best known for being a charitable endeavor - all profits are donated to charitable causes. So if the survey included an assessment of how "charitable" or "socially responsible" subjects felt when consuming this brand, I expect it may have outperformed the others in those regards.)
When it comes to commoditized products, a firm must really do something different to stand out. Consider Jolt Cola's "hypercaffeinated" product, or Ben & Jerry's designer and novelty flavors. Both of these exemplify companies that can break out of the commodity trap by differentiating their products
The author then considers the strength of brand loyalty for commodity products, and finds it to be questionable. For example, when a person who prefers Pepsi finds themselves in a restaurant that sells only Coke, the typical reaction is to accept Coke. In an informal survey, 84% of people indicated they would do so. (EN: It's also implicit to supermarket studies that, if a ten-cent difference in price drives sales, then brand loyalty is pretty cheap in action even though people speak of strong preferences.)
As such, there is evidence of the emotional value, even of commodities. Some people will pay a premium for their preferred brand, even though most find little difference between market leaders - and even the majority who choose one of the market leaders would switch to cheaper generic or store brands if they had no emotional involvement t all. But that's not what happens.
A final note on the taste test: the author finds in interesting that when the brands are revealed, customers seem amused or surprised, but are not angry - but did not change their consumption habits as a result of this insight.
(EN: Brings to mind an anecdote in which a restaurateur succeeded in fooling a regular customer who was arrogant about their nose for wine by filling expensive bottles with much cheaper wine after using a few tricks to aerate it. The guest waxed poetic about the quality of such a fine wine, and when the ruse was revealed, stormed out of the room and shunned the restaurant since. Some people invest quite a bit of their self-esteem in their choice of brands. Consider that this trickery could have been punished as a crime if the restaurateur actually billed the guest.)
Costs of Associated versus Supported Emotions
Evoking emotion is valuable, but can also be quite expensive. Consider that the media spend of Coca-Cola is well over $200 million per year (EN: that's grossly understated - the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported on March 1 of 2011 that the firm spent more than $2.9 billion in 2010, and that was down from $3 billion in 2009)
It's also noted that simply claiming associated emotions is not sufficient - the claims must be believable, or they will be dismissed. Coca-cola has been working to establish its creditability for over 100 years, and has great credibility. Consumer studies show that the emotional associations customers report match the ones the company has worked very hard to establish - a new cola company cannot unseat Coke even if it bought more advertising.
The author also notes that products that deliver emotions directly gain fierce loyalty even without to cost of advertising. Consider that Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Krispy Kreme donuts, and Starbucks coffee all have fiercely loyal customers - and won them with very little advertising. They simply put out products that customers love.
There's a brief mention of Apple computer, which has won on both counts - compared to other brands of personal computers, they have done more advertising, their advertisements have been based on emotion rather than capabilities, and the product experience has been positive. The synergy between associated and supported emotions have made the brand a powerhouse.
Truth (and Fantasy) in Advertising
A vast industry has been built up around advertising, and a vast body of laws and regulations regarding advertising has evolved as well. Customers expect advertising to be truthful, and the law is on their side.
From a functional perspective, assessment of deception and fraud are simple enough to prove. If an advertisement claims a brand is made with cane sugar, it must be made with cane sugar. If a brand promises a product is good for cleaning linoleum, it must be demonstrably suitable to that purpose.
But what of a claim, if only by implication, that using a specific brand will make you happy, or popular? There has not been much legislation or many successful lawsuits on behalf of customers who do not get the emotional benefits promised by the products they consume. Everyone knows that's just marketing fluff, and firms have not been held legally responsible when they fail to deliver on emotional benefits.
They are, however, held responsible in the market. Customers who purchase a product because they expect emotional outcomes feel disappointed and angry. A firm that fails to deliver on the emotional promises finds it alienates the customer for a long period of time, and that customer spreads negative word-of-mouth. Where disappointed customers gang together in social media, the effects on a brand can be devastating.
(EN: It's been suggested, though not by this author, that neuroscience can be used to provide objective proof that a commercial generated emotional expectations and consumption of the product failed to fulfill them. For the present, that seems unlikely because valid science cannot yet support those kinds of assertions - but it may eventually be so, and I do expect that, with or without pseudoscientific "evidence" there may be a case in which a consumer convinces a jury that they were misled in regard to emotional rather than functional benefits.)
There's also the question of how much of an associated emotion is created by advertising and how much of it is brought by people's own "fantasies" and unfounded expectations. It can be argued that any product that is advertised during a sporting event is attempting to make viewers associate youth and physical prowess to their product. It is less arguable when the content of a commercial supports the notion that viewers should fantasies - though this is not considered dishonest because it is expected that the viewer recognizes that the commercial is fantastical in nature, for entertainment rather than demonstration. But ultimately, this is an attempt to associate emotions to the product that are part of the fantasy.
Even less fantastical advertising encourages the viewer to imagine the benefits they would receive by using the product - functional as well as emotional - so it can be reasonable argued that all advertising leverages fantasy to some degree.