Using FaceReader to Evaluate Consumer Emotions toward Personification in Animals

Abstract

Products reinforcing consumer’s positive emotions can encourage purchasing behavior. The following emotional effects also can influence consumers’ recognition and feelings. Besides structured oral responses, physiological signals useable for understanding consumer emotions. In design field, personifications in animals is commonly used in package design, advertising, commercial activities or any other relevant fields. It is important for designers to understand consumer emotions and the reasons behind, for building emotional communication between customer and product, and create consumer demands. In this paper, an emotion recognition experiment conducted to understand 112 participants’ emotional reactions toward realistic drawings and personifications. FaceReader, a software program that can automatically analyze facial expressions, adopted to recognize participants’ emotions. Meanwhile, we collected participants’ self-reports to compare with those aroused emotions from viewing sample images. The results showed (1) participants showed significant emotional differences in neutral, happiness, sadness and disgust toward realistic drawings and personifications. (2) Participants had higher positive evaluations on personification design. (3) The facial expressions of personification design could affect participants’ emotions. (4) Realistic drawings could inspire more associated ideas from participants. In addition, we generalized limitations and precautions in using FaceReader under the experimental condition as follows. (1) When participants viewed static images, the statistical values of negative emotions could be low. (2) FaceReader could recognize neutral facial expression as sadness. This research has demonstrated practical implications of personification in animals. This approach provides a preferable basis for researchers and designers in relevant fields of design practice and marketing.