High growth Asian markets present huge opportunities for advertising and marketing industries. Self-report tools that have been validated over thousands of ads in western markets are useful, but less reliable, in Asian cultures due to the prevalence of response bias. Facial coding represents an opportunity to measure true emotional responses that can mitigate that bias, but facial expressions tend to be significantly more subtle and fleeting in Asian cultures. Given these dual challenges, we present a solution path towards better communication of, and the science behind, emotional insights. We also present results from the first facial expression-sales prediction study in China, in conjunction with Mars Inc., to further explore how facial expressions are connected to actual Asian consumer behaviour.
Ads that evoke emotions keep us entertained and are more memorable, but do they really drive product sales? To answer this question, we use facial coding to quantitatively measure peopleâs tacit emotional responses to ads, and then model the facial responses with sales data for these ads. We collected data from a 1000+ viewers as they watched 140 ads from the comfort of their homes in the US, the UK, France and Germany. Using dynamic modeling, we identified the facial measures and emotion trajectories that are most predictive of sales effectiveness. In this session, we will share our key findings and show how this approach can be applied to other areas of market research like concept testing and media research.