MEASURING ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE November 16, 2009

Role of Emotions in Consumer Behavior

Role of emotive factors in consumer behavior has become a major topic of debate. The
arguments have gone to an extreme saying that consumer behavior is all about an
entirely emotional response subsequently rationalized as cognitive behavior.

While promoting MOSTER we have been taking a more balanced approach saying that
both cognitive and emotive factors influence the consumer behavior and their relative
importance depends on the immediate context, product under consideration and socio
cultural setting.

When it comes to post consumption behavior, we have been arguing that;

Customer satisfaction is not a unitary monolithic state. Rather, it is a

conglomeration of various shades / states of mind for various attributes/
dimensions of consumption experience.

Consequently rather than looking at satisfaction as one number representing

one unitary monolithic state, state we must break it down into its shades that
is dissatisfaction, satisfaction and delight.

All cognitive plane each of these state reflects following responses:

Dissatisfaction leads to disapproval

Satisfaction leads to Approval / acceptance

Delight leads to positive endorsement / canvassing

On emotive plane each of these state reflects the following feelings:

Dissatisfaction results in disappointment

Satisfaction results in being contented

Delight results in happiness or being excited / pleased

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 MEASURING ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE November 16, 2009

Measuring Emotions in Customer Experience

Our model for Customer Experience Measurement the MOSTER system is able to
classify the respondents as dissatisfied, satisfied and delighted customers for each
attributes as well as on over all basis.

In The Moster System, while the cognitive part is implicit in the data generated and
classification methodology used, researcher fraternity often demanded validation in
terms of differing emotional states for these three categories of respondents.

We are well aware of the methodological issues involved in ascertaining emotive states
using structured questionnaire approach. However, we decided to “make do” with one
of the existing approaches where we ask the respondents to describe their mental state
using emotive descriptors.

The Experiment
An experimental study was done to assess customer satisfaction with respect to
shopping experience for a category of household durable. The respondents were asked
to indicate their mental state using emotive descriptors during purchase process and on
completion of purchase.

A correspondence analysis was done to find out degree of association of various

emotive descriptors with respect to satisfaction states as identified by MOSTER system.

Our hypothesis was the following:

Delighted customers would show a strong association with emotive

descriptors like enthused, pleased, etc.

Satisfied customers would show strong association with being contented.

Dissatisfied customers would show strong association with being unhappy,

disappointed, etc.

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 MEASURING ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE November 16, 2009

Results
It so happened that the proportion of dissatisfied customers turned out to be very small
i.e. less than one percent. However, the following correspondence plot clearly shows
different emotions being strongly associated with delighted and satisfied customer
category.

Satisfaction Status Vs Feelings after Purchase

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 MEASURING ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE November 16, 2009

Are Top Box Customers really delighted?

One common argument popular among the status quo-ist is that, we do not need a
special algorithm ( like Moster ) to estimate/ identify delighted customers. It is adequate
to track top box performance using the traditional approach and report the top box
performance because top box customers are the delighted customers. In order to
ascertain the validity of these claim we conducted correspondence analysis among
three categories satisfied, delighted and top box customers on various emotive states.
The following correspondence map is self explanatory.

Satisfaction Status Vs Feelings after Purchase

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