SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT
As marketers continue their love affairwith analytics, there’s a danger that they’ll lose sight of their customers’humanity—and the true value of their brand. This package looks at how tocombine the quantitative with the qualitative.
MARKETING
The New Science of Customer Emotions
Scott Magids, Alan Zorfas, and DanielLeemon | page 66
When a company connects with customers’emotions, the payoff can be huge. Yet building such connections is often moreguesswork than science. To remedy that problem, the authors have created alexicon of nearly 300 “emotional motivators” and, using big data analytics,have linked them to specific profitable behaviors. They describe how firms canidentify and leverage the particular motivators that will maximize theircompetitive advantage and growth.
The process can be divided into threephases. First, companies should inventory their existing market research andcustomer insight data, looking for qualitative descriptions of what motivatestheir customers—desires for freedom, security, success, and so on. Furtherresearch can add to their understanding of those motivators.
Second, companies should analyze their bestcustomers to learn which of the motivators just identified are specific or moreimportant to the high-value group. They should then fi nd the two or three ofthese key motivators that have a strong association with their brand. Thisprovides a guide to the emotions they need to connect with in order to grow theirmost valuable customer segment.
Third, companies need to make theorganization’s commitment to emotional connection a key lever for growth—notjust in the marketing department but across every function in the firm.
HBR Reprint R1511C