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Based on Klaus Scherer’s Component Process Definition of Emotion and Feeling, Delplanque & Sander's opinion piece describes the various components of the Scherer model and why any inferences drawn regarding the quality and intensity of an instance of emotion that are based solely on a single component of the model (i.e. by making a reverse inference) are likely to be fallacious. This commentary reviews some of the opinions expressed by Delplanque & Sander and considers the implications of what they describe as the ‘reverse inference fallacy’, in the context of academic and commercial emotion measurement. Beyond this, two important conclusions may be drawn: Emotion is more than the subjectively experienced feeling associated with the instance of emotion. There’s no single objective or subjective measure that captures an instance of emotion holistically and in its entirety.

To address the questions posed in the title, we begin by considering the fundamental nature of unconsciousness and emotion. By interpreting this within the framework of a dual-process theory of higher cognition, and generalising emotion into ‘mental activity’ and unconsciousness into ‘no immediate awareness’, we conclude that these hidden influences are profoundly important in product-related behaviour. To determine how these influences might be accessed, we explore the Theory of Constructed Emotion, which disputes the fundamental existence of basic emotions along with their supposed neuro-physiological counterparts. Taken at face value this excludes the possibility of using objective methods such as neuroimaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG) and galvanic skin responses (GSR) for predicting emotion. Facial coding is rejected for the same reason. We conclude that direct questioning using procedures such as the EsSense Profile® amongst others, may have some value but they are always vulnerable to over-rationalisation and confabulation. Our preferred approach involves a well-established application of best-worst scaling known as concept profiling. In a new development, this word-based procedure deliberately focuses on non-valence concept terms, identified on the basis of Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect. These, we hold, direct consumers towards hidden influences beyond liking that might otherwise be overlooked. The efficacy of this procedure is demonstrated by comparing two iconic brands, Coke and Pepsi, and what motivates users to choose one brand over the other.

This chapter describes the nature of conceptual associations and considers how these often-hidden aspects of product, package, and brand might influence longer-term product adoption. It is written against a backdrop that acknowledges that most new products fail in-market, despite favorable research findings prelaunch. Consequently, product developers and research practitioners need to find new ways of exploring what really influences longer-term product adoption and how these might be captured and quantified in evaluative product research. This is where conceptual profiling can make a significant contribution. The chapter begins by explaining the etiology of product failure followed by a description of the fundamental nature of conceptual associations, how these relate to emotion, how emotion delivers reward, and finally how reward influences longer-term product choices. This is followed by a detailed description of conceptual profiling along with several practical applications. The final part of the chapter elaborates upon some new ideas on how conceptual associations can be used to predict the otherwise inaccessible emotional outcomes that finally determine longer-term product adoption.

All objects, including brands and products, have perceptual (sensory) characteristics and conceptual associations. Together they determine how an object seems to us and how it impacts on our feelings. Capturing and quantifying the conceptual associations that trigger the feelings that induce reward and subsequently motivate behaviour (conceptual profiling), provides a rich source of insight for guiding brand and product development. This paper presents a brief theoretical description of conceptualisation, followed by three practical case studies. Study 1 demonstrates the application of segmentation to explore singularity of brand message in car brands. Across a sample of UK car buyers, Citroen exhibited a weak conceptual profile. However segmentation analysis revealed four underlying segments that conceptualise Citroen differently from each other, indicating that the brand does have clarity of meaning but it differs substantially across car buyers. Study 2 compares brand versus unbranded product conceptual profiles for two dark chocolates. Scatterplots revealed a high correlation (r = 0.78, brand–product consonance) for one brand but dissonance (r = 0.05) for the other. The former succeeded in-market whereas the latter failed. The correlation coefficient may be used as an index of fit-to-brand. Because it is obtained independently from liking, this measure avoids the halo effect that often confounds direct measures of fit-to-brand. Study 3 compares the conceptual profiles of five Scottish tartans to the conceptual profile of an unbranded Scotch whisky, with a view to selecting and featuring one of the tartans in branding. The tartans differed in colour, colour contrast and degree of formality of design. Conceptual profiling revealed that the formal tartans were highly consonant with the whisky irrespective of colour and contrast, presumably because of their strong mutual association with Scotland, but attempts to contemporise the tartan by adding informal design elements created dissonance.

All objects including brands, products and packaging have conceptual (implicit) associations and consequently a conceptual profile. Along with its sensory profile this defines and characterises the object. Together these influence our attitudes, our affective reactions (feelings and pleasure) and our behaviour towards it. The conceptual content of a brand is usually clear and readily accessible via established brand personality measures. However, until recently, the conceptual content of product per se has received scant attention. The conceptual content of an unbranded product derives from two sources: the fundamental nature of the product category (‘category effect’) and within-category sensory differences amongst related products (‘sensory specific effect’). The latter leads to subtle variations in conceptual content that are important in the context of product optimisation but may be difficult to measure. Best–worst scaling (BWS) is an indirect method of scaling that has been found to be particularly useful for measurement of ‘soft’ or abstract attributes that are not easily quantified. It has been applied previously to conceptual profiling of brands and products. This study compares the utility of BWS versus a direct rating method (an online technique known as bullseye) for accessing the conceptual content of six unbranded orange juices. Degree of familiarisation with the research process and the juices (intensive familiarisation versus a simple warm-up) was added as a second variable, thereby creating four methodological cells to compare. Irrespective of familiarisation protocol, BWS proved to be more effective than bullseye in eliciting the ‘sensory specific effect’. However the biggest effect was associated with the familiarisation protocol, where intensive familiarisation engendered more effective discrimination amongst the juices than the simple warm-up, irrespective of scaling methodology. We conclude that intensive familiarisation is of great benefit to the conceptual profiling of unbranded products for product development. Within a product’s conceptual profile, BWS and bullseye discriminated amongst the conceptual terms to a similar degree. Previous studies have tended to find that BWS gives greater discrimination amongst the choice items than rating scales. We suggest that the nature of the choice items and the number of decisions required from participants both affect the relative discrimination of the two methods.

We define ‘feeling’ as the subjective, affective experience of an emotion or a mood. People seek out feelings that are positive because it is rewarding for them to do so. It follows that manufacturers of branded goods should be concerned about the feelings that predispose consumers to buy their products and also about the feelings that their products help consumers to attain, perpetuate, enhance, diminish or dissipate, in pursuit of reward. Towards this end, practical procedures are required that will allow researchers to capture the prevailing feelings that individuals are experiencing at a particular moment in time and to track the transitions induced by products, brands, advertising etc. In order to develop and apply such research tools, researchers need an appropriate and well-focused lexicon through which they can access and explore feelings. This study describes a data-driven classification of feelings. An initial word list comprising 544 terms, of which 209 were notionally positive and 335 were notionally negative, was developed in English, French, German and Italian. In Phase 1 of the study, approximately 350 respondents were recruited in each of France, Germany, Italy and the UK to participate in a self-report feelings questionnaire. This yielded 55 feeling clusters of which 23 were notionally positive and 32 were notionally negative. In Phase 2 of the study, 60 exemplar terms in English were extracted from the previous cluster analysis and subjected to a similarity sorting exercise using 70 UK respondents. This yielded 25 lower-level clusters and 12 higher-level clusters, all of which were intuitively interpretable, along with a map derived using MDS that resembled a circumplex with the usual dimensions of affect and arousal. Frequency counts based on respondents’ self-reported feelings revealed that 64% of endorsements were of notionally positive and 36% notionally negative terms. This supports previous findings that the majority of people seem to exist in a generally positive state of mind. Findings were consistent across the four countries. The key outputs from this research are a lexicon of feelings comprising 59 terms in English, French, German and Italian along with a highly intuitive classification of these terms into 25 lower-order and 12 higher-order clusters. It is envisaged that the lexicon and the classification scheme will find application in consumer research and in brand and product development.

Sensory branding is an important practical tool in modern brand, packaging, and product development. It is also the subject of serious academic study amongst scientists interested in uncovering the reasons why people do the things that they do, largely because brands are potent and omnipresent determinants of human behavior. This chapter proposes that brands are essentially bundles of conceptual associations that have the capacity to trigger a vast array of positively and negatively rewarding emotional outcomes. These, in turn, influence what we do, what we buy, what we eat, and how we behave, more generally. Branding is most commonly implemented through the modalities (or senses) of vision and audition, which means that brands have intrinsic visual and auditory sensory characteristics. The colors and shapes associated with Red Bull and the sounds that confer instant recognition upon the Apple iPhone, are obvious examples. Sensory branding, as conceived initially, takes a multisensory approach by extending the sensory profiles of brands beyond the visual and auditory modalities to embrace touch, smell, and taste. In practice, this means that some brands may have a characteristic feel (silky, smooth fabric textures associated with certain milk chocolates), a distinct fragrance (common across many laundry brands) or a defining taste character (if it isn’t bitter it can’t be Guinness). Sensory branding is feasible because sensory characteristics of all types have associated conceptual meaning (eg, bitterness is associated with masculinity and aggression). Associating a brand with particular sensory characteristics, superimposes the conceptualizations associated with the sensory characteristics onto the conceptual profile of the brand. Assuming consonance across these conceptual elements, these additional sensory characteristics effectively reinforce the brand message. They also provide consumers with additional channels through which they can interact with the brand and marketers with additional channels to communicate brand meaning and to create distinctiveness in the manner in which the brand is presented. It is important to recognize that the other two primary elements of branded goods, the product per se and the form of the packaging within which it is contained (devoid of branding), each has a conceptual profile. These arise, in part, by virtue of their intrinsic sensory characteristics. Adjusting the sensory profiles of product and pack will alter their corresponding conceptual profiles, causing them to become more or less aligned with that of the brand. Greater alignment means that product and pack actually reinforce the brand message (known as brand–product and brand–pack consonance, respectively). Dissonance has the opposite effect. This leads to the point of view that the sensory profiles of product and pack should be optimized primarily to reinforce the brand message rather than maximizing other research metrics such as mean liking ratings in product evaluation or standout in pack testing. It also leads to the idea that products and packs may be designed to have distinct “sensory signatures,” and that these could actually play a principal role in delivering the brand message. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, Red Bull, Marmite, and Guinness, amongst others, are classics in this regard. In this chapter, emphasis is placed on the science of sensory branding and most particularly in exploring the mechanisms through which sensory characteristics impact on branding. This requires consideration of the fundamental nature of sensory characteristics, of pleasantness, of conceptual association, of emotion, and of reward. The Duality of Reward Hypothesis is introduced as a model for understanding how reward motivates human behavior and how sensory branding may deliver reward via the mechanisms proposed within this hypothesis. Considerable emphasis is placed on brand–product consonance and how this may be investigated using The Matrix brand exploration tool.

Human behavior is influenced greatly by the conceptualizations (sometimes known as conceptual associations or implicit associations) that we associate with everyday things (ie, brands, products, objects, places, people, events, etc.). Conceptual associations exert an influence by triggering emotional outcomes that may be either positively or negatively rewarding to some extent, thereby motivating us, knowingly or otherwise, to start, continue, attenuate or cease interaction with whatever it is that seems to be triggering the reward. Only recently has the impact of conceptual association been appreciated fully in terms of brand, packaging, and product development. This chapter provides a theoretical understanding of the role of conceptualization in motivating behavior (via the “Duality of Reward” hypothesis), a discussion of the commercial implications in terms of product maintenance and development and a detailed description of the practice of conceptual profiling as a means of capturing and quantifying conceptual associations.

The conceptual profile of an unbranded product arises via three sources of influence: (i) category effect – how consumers conceptualise the product category: (ii) sensory effect – how the sensory characteristics of a particular product differentiate it from other products in the category: (iii) liking effect – the disposition of consumers to the category and how much they like a particular product. Assuming that category effects (conceptualisation and disposition) are constant across the set of products, it is anticipated that the conceptual differences apparent across the set of unbranded products would be driven, at least in part, by sensory differences. This study describes the application of best–worst scaling to conceptual profiling of unbranded dark chocolates and outlines novel data modelling procedures used to explore sensory/conceptual relationships.

Summary Twenty subjects were used to investigate the contexts in which they typically consumed a range of alcoholic beverages. Contexts were elicited using the repertory grid method, and five principal components were found to describe the perceptual dimensions common to most people. The poles of these dimensions are summarily interpreted as: thirstquenching vs. not; formal meal vs. social drinking environment; before meals vs. after meals; in a pub vs. outside a pub; consumed neat vs. mixed. The ways in which this information can be used to develop marketing strategies and influence product development are discussed.

The concept of food acceptability is explored in depth, and an interpretation, based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response paradigm of psychophysical judgement, is made. In this context, food acceptability is considered to be a behavioural phenomenon, which is the result of the interaction between a stimulus and a consumer. Possible factors which pertain to the stimulus and to the consumer are listed, although it is clear that within these broad headings, different food types will have their own unique lists.

A procedure based on the repertory grid method was used to elicit information from twenty-six female consumers, on the intrinsic product characteristics which they individually perceived in a range of thirty-one chocolate confectionery products. Each subject described a private list of attributes, with corresponding line scales, which she ultimately used to rate all the products. Photographs of the confectionery products were used in the elicitation procedure. The resulting product by attribute matrices, which were qualitatively and quantitatively different for each subject, were input to generalised Procrustes analysis, to yield a product space in four dimensions. Individuals' attributes were organised into thirty-seven classes and these were used to interpret the product space. It was the consensus view of this group of consumers, that attributes associated with sharing and the ability to section the product, together with differences in texture, were the main discrimination features separating the products. Other less important factors were also identified. Using a preference mapping technique, preference ratings were successfully superimposed on the four dimensional product space. This implies that the main discriminating features were important in determining preference. On the first two dimensions, a majority of this exclusively female panel showed a preference for light/airy textured chocolate, and avoided the more chunky products. However, on the third and fourth dimensions, the main direction of preference was towards the milk chocolate products. Chocolate consumption data derived from a diary study could not be similarly related to the product space.

This paper describes the development of a method for investigating consumer perceptions of foods. Each of 46 subjects independently used a version of Kelly's repertory grid method to elucidate the attributes (constructs) perceived in 25 meat products. Subjects then scaled the individual products with respect to each of their own constructs. Data were input to generalized Procrustes analysis to obtain a perceptual map of the products for each subject and a consensus product map. The principal components of the consensus map, and hence the important perceptual attributes, were interpreted by identifying the constructs which were most heavily weighted by individual subjects.