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When a car makes you smile: Development and application of an instrument to measure product emotions. Pieter M.A. Desmet Paul Hekkert Jan J. Jacobs Delft University of Technology Department of Industrial Design Abstract This paper introduces the Product Emotion Measure (PrEmo), an instrument to assess emotions elicited by product appearance. The non-verbal self-report instrument is based on a set of 18 product emotions. These 18 emotions are visualised by animations of a cartoon character and presented on a computer interface. Subjects can express themselves by selecting those animations that correspond with their felt emotion. The paper discusses the development of PrEmo in the context of existing instruments. Furthermore, an illustrative study is reported, in which emotions elicited by car models are measured. INTRODUCTION Emotions involved in the consumption experience have become an important object of study in consumer behaviour. Researchers that focus on these emotional aspects tend to study the total consuming experience rather than merely the buying experience (e.g., Hirschman and Holbrook 1982). Consequently, studies in this field of interest focus on a broad variety of aspects of the consuming experience. Examples of studied aspects are affective reactions to consumption situations (e.g., Derbaix and Pham 1991), the relationship between consumption emotions and satisfaction (e.g., Westbrook and Oliver 1991), and post purchase affective responses (e.g., Westbrook 1987). Although all of these studies have found emotions to be an important component of consumer response, one significant aspect of the consumption-related emotions has been left ignored: the nature of emotions elicited by product appearance. In spite of this disregard, emotions elicited by product appearance are an important object of study for two reasons. First, it is acknowledged that emotions elicited by products can enhance the pleasure of buying, owning and using them (Hirschman and Holbrook 1982). These emotions elicited by products are strongly influenced by the appearance of the product (Desmet, Tax, and Overbeeke 1999). Second, it has often been argued that since products are nowadays often similar in technical characteristics, quality, and price, the importance of product design as an opportunity for differential advantage in the marketplace increases (e.g., Dumaine 1991). Therefore, from a marketing point of view, emotions elicited by product appearance, are important objects of study. In spite of this importance, most studies fail to distinguish the emotions elicited by the product appearance itself from emotions elicited by the total consumption experience. This paper introduces an instrument specifically developed for measuring emotions elicited by product appearance. Next, a pilot study is reported in which the Desmet, P.M.A., Hekkert, P., Jacobs, J.J. (2000). When a car makes you smile: Development and application of an instrument to measure product emotions. In: S.J. Hoch and R.J. Meyer (Eds.), Advances in Consumer Research, 27, 111-117. emotions are assessed elicited by five car models that vary in appearance. First, however, existing emotion measurement tools will be discussed with respect to their applicability for measuring product related emotions. I. MEASURING EMOTIONS In a previous study it was found that product design typically elicits combinations of distinct emotions that are often of low intensity (Desmet and Hekkert 1997). Hence, an instrument is required that is capable of measuring combinations of specific emotions with a low intensity level. As we are interested in momentary emotional reactions, the instrument should be as fast and intuitive as possible in use. An additional demand is that the instrument can be used across cultures. Existing emotion measurement instruments will first be evaluated on the basis of these criteria. These instruments can be divided in two general categories: (1) psychophysiological measurement instruments, and (2) self-report measurement instruments. Psychophysiological instruments measure typical physiological reactions that come along with emotions, such as changes in heart rate or pupil dilatation. These measures cannot be used to distinguish emotions since they only indicate the amount of arousal that is part of the emotion. Moreover, emotions of low intensity are difficult to assess with these measures. Therefore, psychophysiological instruments are not suitable for the present purpose of measuring emotions elicited by product design. When measuring emotions with self report measures, authors generally use measures that are based on one of two competing approaches to classify human emotions: the dimensional approach and the categorical approach.1 The first approach rests on the assumption that all emotions share a few underlying dimensions. Measures based on this approach always employ scales of emotional dimensions. A widely accepted dimensional scale of emotions is the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance scale (PAD) developed by Russell and Mehrabian (1977). A well-known instrument based on the PAD scale is the Self Assessment Manikin (SAM), developed by Lang (1985). In this instrument, an experienced emotion is assessed by measuring the perceived pleasure, arousal, and dominance. SAM is a non-verbal method; it depicts each PAD dimension with a graphic character arrayed along a continuous nine-point scale. The fact that SAM does not measure emotions per se but generalised emotional states, is an important limitation for the current application. In a study comparing different emotion measures, Richins (1997) concludes that SAM is best used when a researcher does not need to know the specific experienced emotions. However, for measuring emotions elicited by product appearance, such a non-verbal response measure seems preferable over often used verbal methods. First, emotions elicited by product appearance are often difficult to verbalise. Subjects may not have an adequate vocabulary to express their feelings precisely. Second, asking subjects to describe their emotional response will require cognitive involvement, which may influence the measurement. Moreover, the use of verbal instruments across cultures is complicated. Therefore, the non-verbal nature of SAM is promising for the present purposes. Measures based on the categorical approach do purport to measure combinations of specific emotions. According to this approach, all emotions are regarded to stem from a relatively small number of basic emotion categories. Examples of instruments based on the categorical approach are the Emotion Profile Index (Plutchik and Kellerman 1974) and the Differential Emotions Scale (DES) (Izard 1977). Both Plutchik and Izard argue that all Desmet, P.M.A., Hekkert, P., Jacobs, J.J. (2000). When a car makes you smile: Development and application of an instrument to measure product emotions. In: S.J. Hoch and R.J. Meyer (Eds.), Advances in Consumer Research, 27, 111-117. emotions are mixtures of ‘basic’ emotions and therefore can all be described in terms of these basic emotions. The DES for example, measures 10 fundamental emotions. Although these measures assess the specific nature of emotional reactions, consumer research scholars question their validity for measuring emotions other than the basic emotions (e.g., Ortony and Turner 1990). Therefore, recently, some sets of emotions have been developed which can be applied to measure emotions elicited by specific environmental stimuli, e.g., emotional reactions to advertisements (Batra and Holbrook 1990). The advantage of these typologies is that they can be applied in an instrument for measuring combinations of distinct emotions. A general shortcoming of instruments based on the categorical approach is that these instruments are commonly verbal. A special type of non-verbal instrument measures continuous emotional fluctuations. For example, Aaker, Stayman, and Hagerty (1986) developed a ‘warmth monitor’ to measure dynamic feeling of warmth during television commercials. In an ensuing study (Stayman and Aaker 1993), they concluded that it might be possible to use this monitor for ‘humour’ and ‘irritation’ as well.
Approximate Word count = 4812
Approximate Pages = 19.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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