Consumers' emotions

Consumer behaviors and decisions are overwhelmingly driven by emotions. By the time rational deliberation enters, a decision has already been largely made. For marketers and researchers, consumers' behaviors cannot be truly explained or stimulated without understanding the underlying emotions.

Emotion is a powerful neurological system that has evolved over millions of years to enhance our ability to adapt and survive. Its main function is to prepare us to react quickly to new situations. Emotions motivate and reward us to behave in ways that are evolutionarily advantageous. Of course, today in our modern societies, these same emotions are in action, but driving behaviors far broader than before. For example, the emotional drive to elevate one's status in a community is still extremely strong. However, this emotion is now acted upon in many more ways - from driving a luxury car, to being a yoga practitioner, to, um, blogging about an esoteric topic.

For marketers, resonating with consumers' emotions is arguably one of the highest potential opportunities to invigorate growth. Through the understanding of consumers' emotional needs, marketers can effectively lower barriers, evoke stronger interest, and develop lasting bonds. A brand that consistently evokes strong pleasant emotions will enjoy higher market share and profitability.

One of the major problems with using emotions in marketing is that they are very complicated. There is no agreement in the academic, neuroscience, or psychology fields how many emotions really exist, or which ones are primary and which ones are composites of multiple primary emotions. One can easily argue that there are hundreds of unique emotions which quickly make it unmanageable.

In addition, emotions, because they are individual's inward experiences, are inherently difficult to describe. It's a bit like trying to describe a specific shade of blue you saw in your mind's eye. Without a common experience or reference, it is exceedingly difficult to develop a common vision or understanding across a business team.

The first step for marketers to employ emotions is to have a framework that can be used to interpret, organize, and analyze consumers' emotional states. One good framework is to base it on intended behaviors. The notion is this - if emotions evolved to drive behaviors that increase our chances of passing our genes forward, what are these important behaviors? The answer turns out to be rather simple. Here are a few:
- Avoid danger, ie. being someone's dinner
- Find food, or better still, find new sources of food
- Attract mates
- Compete for mates
- Keep your off springs healthy and safe
- Belong to a group who can help you and keep you safe
- Save your attention and energy for things that make a difference
Basically, at the highest level, emotions drive us to avoid, investigate, engage, cooperate, get ready, ignore...

This is how our framework works. Feelings such as kindness, compassion, and caring may be subtly different emotions, but, they have a common intended behavior, which is to provide assistance to another individual. By categorizing emotions into a common group, we can reduce the number of emotion groups to 20 - 30. Now we have a framework that simplifies the complexity enough to enable meaningful communication and analysis.