Abstract:

This month’s issue is typical of the Research World approach of late. It takes an issue that is topical and important - emotional response to brands and how to research this - and looks at it from a variety of angles. David Penn challenges the emphasis on neuromarketing as a means of tapping our unconscious emotional response to brands and points out that, while we can measure responses in the brain, this does not necessarily mean that we know what those responses mean. He makes a powerful case for research as a means of trying to establish the critical links between the cognitive and the emotional. Marc Gobe links emotional response to brands with our ability to humanise them, with their personality and the experience that they create.