Emotional Responses to Marketing Communication

Abstract

Attempts have been made to measure emotional responses to brands and advertising material using a number of novel devices. The most prominent currently is functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), but this method is expensive and often difficult to interpret. Instead, most applied emotional research has relied on interview-based measures, where questions are asked about how different feeling words fit a number of emotionally latent stimuli (such as brands, adverts etc.). In some cases, pictorial scales are incorporated to visually depict the feelings. There is no general theory that suggests the feelings that should be looked at in advertising testing, or that guides one’s interpretation of participant responses. Attempts to develop such standardised measures are reported by (1986), (1995) and (1997), a recent review is available in (2006). But an integrated framework for advertising testing that focuses mainly on emotional responses does not exist. It is the purpose of this study to propose one such system. We introduce the concept of Net Emotional Response Strength (NERS) and illustrate the use of this in tracking and advertising testing.