Abstract:

Qualitative research often claims to also gather besides rational and functional business aspects the more emotional side of the coin: feelings, moods and emotions that are related to (consumer) perception, decision-making processes and (consumer) behaviour. ;Standard research approaches on how to capture emotions are projective and associative techniques that allow researchers to identify emotions through the analysis of projected brand personalities or imaginative journeys to planets. This paper presents a new method for how to tackle emotions in qualitative market research. This method visualises emotions and structures different kinds of emotions in a landscape of emotions based on basic findings of the psychology of Emotions. Emoticons (i.e. icons who express specific emotions) have been designed, selected and validated regarding their potential to represent specific emotions.