5: Supported Emotions: The Key to Today's Leading Products
Associated emotions are fairly common, whereas supported emotions that are driven by the use of the product itself, evoked by the features and attributes of the physical product, have been given far less consideration. In the modern competitive marketplace, where many brands are competing and advertising has become less effective, it is worthwhile to revisit supported emotions as a means to deliver emotions to customers.
Supported emotions are stronger than associated ones because they are experienced first-hand, rather than communicated through words and images. They cannot be easily or convincingly faked. Supported emotions are also more effective in getting customers to be loyal and even advocate for the product. The author suggests a reinforcing loop because anyone who uses the product experiences the emotions first-hand
The author again fawns over Apple, and stays there for quite a while, the crux of his adoration being that Apple pays great attention to even minute details of its hardware and software products, which not only provides a product that performs the basic functions, but ensures that it is intuitive and easy to use, given the customer a sense of confidence and empowerment. This is in stark contrast to their rivals, whose products remain consuming, inefficient, and difficult to use, and who evoke quite a different set of emotions as a consequence.
The Value of Supported Emotions
The author suggests that we can attempt to break apart "the gestalt of a product" into its individual component and consider the contribution that each one has to customer satisfaction and profit.
(EN: I'm reluctant to accept this - it seems straightforward enough, but my sense is there's much interplay among the components, and other components that are not readily identifiable, such that it is not at all accurate to suggest, as some have, that the color of the cap accounts for exactly 2.5% of revenues. We can assess only in arrears when a change has occurred, and suspect that the last intentional action of the brand was the cause of change, but it really is extremely tenuous and somewhat irresponsible to make such an assertion.)
For example, consider the careful and clever packaging of Apple products. The author asserts that "Apple has deliberately invested in the details of its product packaging [because] Apple believes that its investment in packaging pays off in some fashion ... a noticeably improved emotional experience ... higher profit margins."
The author conducted another informal; study of graduate students who were given a mug with their university emblem. Half were presented the mug in a brown cardboard box, the other half in a decorative gift box. They were then asked to suggest a value, with the opportunity to exchange the mug for money. The difference was statistically significant: the students who received a mug in a gift box demanded 82 cents more for it, and given that the cost of the box was 50 cents, the investment in packaging had a 64% net margin.
(EN: Interesting, but a bit flawed. The true difference in value is not determined by what sellers want to charge for goods, but that which buyers are willing to pay for them. As such, this proves that sellers want to charge more for an item if they ship it in a pretty box, which has nothing to do with the buyer's emotions. Back to the original example of Apple products, the buyer generally has no idea of what the packaging will be when they purchase an item, so it can't be said to influence their decision of what amount they are willing to pay. Ultimately, there are a lot of holes here, but some interesting implications for properly-designed research to explore. There's no doubt that Apple's packaging is innovative and customers are delighted by it - but suggesting this amusement translates to a willingness to pay more for the product is specious reasoning.)
The author suggests that one might speculate that the reason for valuing the mug in the gift box is that students saw it as a value in itself - they could use the decorative box to package a gift they would give to another person, or use it in their own household. This was not considered in the study.
To consider that, they ran another experiment in which the packaging would be destroyed - $25 gift cards were given out in plain envelopes or in decorative ones, such that the envelope had to be torn and rendered unfit for reuse to get at the content. Offered cash instead of the card, those who received it in appealing packaging demanded $21.28 for the card and those who received it in a plain envelope demanded only $18.98 - a $2.30 premium resulted from a forty-cent envelope.
(EN: This has the same flaw - the students are thinking as sellers rather than buyers when hey place a value on the card.)
The point of these studies were not to argue companies should improve packaging (though that seems to be implied), but to suggest that the value of an item is often based on emotions that arise because of a sensory experience related to the product.
B-to-B Emotions
It's suggested that business-to-business purchasing is devoid of emotion. This is often because the person who is making or authorizing the purchase is not the end-user of the product, and that most businesses put in place rigorous procedures for purchasing that are designed to overcome any subjective bias and focus decisions on the cold, hard facts. But this is not at all true.
The author provides an extended description of Dormont, whose flagship product is a flexible blue hose that is used to carry natural gas to appliances, and which is sold primarily to construction companies and homebuilders. Their hose has been designed to meet or exceed quality standards and safety regulations in all localities - not only is their product perceived as "safe," but it is also perceived to be "easy" because a builder can order their product and feel confident that it will satisfy inspectors regardless of location. The connection is so strong and so automatic that it is not rational, but an emotional belief that if it's Dormont, then it's safe.
As a result, Dormont customers can be said to have a passion for their products, and ascribe an automatic level of trust to them, based on their tubing products, that leads them to purchase additional products under the trusted brand.
(EN: The author doesn't pop back out of this rabbit-hole, but it's fairly clear that this example demonstrates the value of reputation in the business-to-business market. It's almost axiomatic that reputation is important in choosing to partner or purchase from another firm, and reputation is obviously based on emotions such as trust and confidence.)
Supported Emotions in Services
It's fairly simple to conceptualize the sensory element of a physical product with which a customer can directly interact - and a bit more difficult to suggest there are supported emotions in the service sector because services are not tangible. However, in receiving a service, the customer comes into contact with physical artifacts, the quality of which give them a basis for supported emotion.
Retail is often considered a service: people are buying the physical products of some manufacturers, but they are doing so in the environment provided by the retailer, whose service is bringing together the products of other firms in a convenient location and helping the customer to find the product they need.
The supported emotions of the retail environment are what lead customers to choose to shop in one store rather than another that stocks the exact same merchandise. The sensory experience of shopping in a high-end department store are the reason that customers choose to buy there, rather than getting the exact same item in a discount store for less. (EN: not to mention the reason many consumers still prefer to shop for some items offline, in spite of the ability to buy them online.)
The author then considers universities as a service - as much as they show a disdain for all things commercial, they are in the business of education, in which someone (a parent, a scholarship-providing charity, an employer, or the student himself) pays for students to be educated. There is also a sharp completion among universities for labor (professors), whose presence at a university attract grant money and students. The business community, too, is a consumer of the product of universities, and place value on job applicants based on their perception of the university - which becomes self-serving (companies want to hire graduates of a given school, making desire to attend that school higher, enabling the school to attract better students and produce better graduates, that are then more desirable to companies, etc.) For all its customers and suppliers, a universities trades on its prestige, which is an emotional quality rather than a functional one.
(EN: The author carries on for quite a while, but I sense this example is not very useful for illustrative purposes. The way in which multiple parties interact in the university system is highly convoluted, and there's even conjecture as to whom is the actual "customer" of the university system - the students they teach, the companies for which they produce trained workers, the government which often pays much of their bills, the companies and nonprofits who pay them to conduct research and develop knowledge, etc. It is a service business, in each instances, but rather tangled, and I don't sense the author emerges from the weeds)