It is often said that “emotion stimulates the mind 3000 times faster than rational thought”. Emotions drive our behavior, the world is driven by emotions! Today, customers really aren’t much interested in attributes; they simply want to know if they can have a product that suits their personality (it’s all about values).
It is not just about a single customer, all customers behave in a similar manner: they purchase products emotionally and then rationalize their choice intellectually.
Capturing mind (through traditional marketing) is one thing, capturing hearts is quite another. Some marketers believe that by providing value added products to the customers they will be able to close the deal but they fail miserably, as it does not ensue every time. Customers do not always behave as a calculating machine. They breathe, weep, enjoy and have a heart which drives with emotions, they always get attracted with the products which make them feel and they get attached with the product emotionally.
Now the question is how do customers decide upon a particular product?
EVALUATION CRITERIA OF CUSTOMERS
Consumers consciously or unconsciously evaluate products on several criteria, some of them are:
Economical - Customers are interested in purchasing those products which are economical i.e. fits in their budget. Take a look at the marketing campaign of Fair and Lovely for instance. They’re simply banking on the fact that the traditional Indian household want their daughters/daughters in law to be fair (preferably)!!!.And what more does a customer want if these set of emotions are shown on a commercial and again offering the same at a low cost! Here, they are not selling the product per say, but they are selling HOPE to the customers.
Pleasure - Consumers are interested in those products which can offer them pleasure after possessing it. Companies’ adjoin pleasure against the features andbenefits of their products and the final deal gets closed with gladness. For instance Raymond’s suiting in their appeal shows that owners feel pleasure while dressing themselves with Raymond suiting.
Security - Insurance products are best examples of this criterion. Marketers appeal customers through fear in their messages. “Papa please yeh rakh lo” a father thinks about his future where his daughter is giving money for his fulfillment of his daily requirements and then he realizes importance of Insurance in life. This is the most important factor as customers are always interested in securing themselves.
Other factors include - Status/Style/Belongingness etc.
Emotional marketing provides many opportunities to a marketer for facing and fighting competition. With that there are some pitfalls associated with the opportunities. Some of them being Expectation Mismatch, Appearance, etc.
Companies engrossed in sustaining in aggressive competition have to take emotional marketing as an opportunity to increase their market share. Repositioning in today’s era of competition is a tedious task as the customer does not give a second chance to the marketer for improving the product offered by the business firms. Effective deployment of emotional marketing can shift market challenger or market follower to the position of market leader.
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