An understanding of the emotional associations with brands will lead to a better understanding of brands, and will provide a powerful insight into strategic planning, especially for positioning and marketing communication.
Emotion
and memory of emotion are associated with everything one experiences in life,
and this includes brands. Recent studies in neuropsychology using functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) that measures brain activity when processing information
have confirmed the role emotion plays in brand choice decisions. It follows that
if we are able to measure and understand the emotional associations with brands,
managers will have a powerful tool for better understanding their brands, and
to help build and reinforce more positive brand attitude, leading to a stronger
brand equity. The good news is that the emotional associations with brands can
be measured. All one needs to do is ask.
Actually,
it isn't quite that simple, but self-reports are the way to determine the subjective
feelings associated with emotion. One of the things that is known about memory
is that when experiencing something, if it is fully processed, all of its component
parts will be stored in various parts of memory (cf. Goode, 2001). One of the
components of that experience is the emotion associated with it, and it will be
stored in something known as non-declarative emotional memory. When a memory is
recalled, all of the component parts are reunited from various areas in the brain,
and that includes the emotional memory.
According
to Bradley and Lang (2000), we become conscious of our emotions and are quite
capable of describing the feelings associated with them. In fact, this is how
we experience emotionsby becoming aware of a subjective feeling when confronted
with something, or when thinking about things. What this means is experience with
brands, as retained in memory, will include emotional associations; and, if asked,
people can talk about it. In a very practical sense this means the emotions associated
with a brand can be measured, enabling managers to better understand them and
work toward optimizing positive emotional associations in memory.
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