The flower of emotions, a new method to quantify the consumers emotions generated by a cosmetic product
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Presented by: Maud Leportier
Since many years, product benefits can be assessed using several approaches: instrumental, clinical, sensory and consumer perception. Standard methodologies are used for decades at any time of the process development to evaluate the consumer perception but nowadays, consumers are not only seeking for products benefits but also for the experience they live when using them. Thus, the role of emotions has been gaining importance across all industries when examining consumer's behavioral decisions. Because L’Occitane group wants to offer products that generate positive emotions to everyone, a reliable, fast and accurate method has been developed to evaluate and quantify the emotions generated by a cosmetic product.
Evaluating emotions is quite complex and has many dimensions. Many variables are important to consider, such as consumers and individual variability, the type of product, the evaluation context, the cultural dimension etc. Many types of approaches can be used to assess an emotional answer through the physiological, behavioral, expressive, or subjective components.This new methodology offers a different approach focus on a quantitative evaluation of the emotions felt by consumers when smelling a cosmetic product. In this declarative method, the strategic steps were the choice of emotional terms, the evaluation scale, the evaluation protocol, and the statistical validation.
The proposed protocol allows to easily quantify the predominance of each emotion for a given cosmetic product. First, an initial set of 111 terms representing emotions was clustered into 17 emotional universes thanks to discussion groups, a free sorting task and online questionnaires. A map representing the proximities between emotions was produced. Valence and arousal of emotions were found to be both key factors in the results given by the 380 consumers involved in the study. In a second step, during a measurement session performed in controlled conditions, 30 consumers were asked to assess 3 perfumes by scoring each of the 17 emotional universes on a linear scale. In addition, if the cursor was placed above ¾ of the scale for one universe, subject was asked to choose a specific emotion within this universe closest to his or her feeling.
Analysis of the rating scores allows to obtain the emotional profile of each product tested during the study. Products can also be represented on a factor analysis map whose components are linked to emotional universes. Details of the frequencies of the unique choice made among the original emotions felt in contact with the product are additionally obtained, refining the results. This experiment showed a good reproducibility and confirmed the discrimination ability of the proposed measurement of emotions.
Thanks to this new methodology, 9 body milks have been evaluated to support emotional claims. First, it has been showed that the body milks generate some emotional universes in common (like feeling more comfortable) probably linked to the type of product. They also generate some specific emotions: for example, a Lavender body milk will generate a zen feeling while a Verbena body milk will generate more vitality and joy.
On overall, this smart methodology will enable L’Occitane to assess emotional profiles of cosmetic products as a routine. This tool is already helpful to develop new products to satisfy consumer needs in terms of positive emotions.