부산대학교 도서관

Throughout the last decades of consumer research, the importance of positive consumer emotions for product and advertizing success has repeatedly been shown. Especially in the early product innovation process, accurate testing of emotional responses is crucial to prevent false investments. Although their validity has been questioned, the use of verbal scales to assess emotional consumer responses is still a common method. In emotion research, measuring involuntary bodily responses has proven to provide a more objective insight into emotional experiences. So-called psychophysiological measures, e.g. electrodermal responses, heart rate changes and electrical facial muscle activity, are able to paint a holistic picture of emotions, when used in a multivariate way. Although application of these methods is not new to consumer research, combinations of several valid indicators have hardly been applied. One reason might be the complexity to display results of suchlike research designs, especially to practitioners in marketing and market research. Addressing this problem, we developed a standardized method to visualize parameter values of different psychophysiological indicators in a way known from brain imaging, named 'Physio-HeatMaps'. Activity of three indicators each for positive and negative emotional responses, are displayed as colored spots on a black-and-white photo, based on a color scaling, ranging from dark blue (low activity) to red (high activity). Z-standardized values are averaged to calculate an emotional load for each emotional quality. To test the applicability of this result visualization for objective emotional assessment of abstract market research stimuli, two studies were conducted. The aim was to investigate emotional responses to Relevant Insights for commercial campaigns and new Product Concepts. Results were contrasted to self-reported stimulus attractiveness. In both studies, the verbal report resulted in different preference ratings than measured emotional responses. Since distorted answer tendencies are a repeating issue in market research, verbal results in our studies may be subject to such influences. Using this new method to display results from psychophysiological assessments can help practitioners to go beyond verbal scales and their measurement problems and follow truly promising concepts. Further research is directed to validating 'Physio-HeatMaps' in larger samples and expanding their application to other topics in (Neuro)Marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]