Abstract:

Emotions are associated with everything we experience, including communication, purchase and consumption related to brands. Emotions are unconscious underlying elementary processes, to be distinguished from feelings. Emotions can be observed as unconscious avoidance or approach reactions to things that happen to us. This paper describes the nature of emotions and suggests the possibility of measuring a set of positive/negative emotions. A large-scale survey introducing the concept of NERS (Net Emotional Response Strength) is presented. The survey that measures NERS scores of more than 60 brands is a powerful tool for understanding and positioning brands. The measurements of emotions tie in with the positive/negative consumer motivation structure of the Rossiter-Percy grid and define which products and brands are favoured by underlying positive emotions and which have to cross a barrier of negative emotions.