Creating Products that Captivate Customers

I've recently read Built to Love, which considers the emotional nature of the relationship between customer and brand.   The basic premise of the book seems sound: that customers may purchase a specific brand without much thought.  They need the benefits of the product, and if a given option offers the right features at an affordable price, they will likely buy it ... but will feel lukewarm about it.   To truly engage the customer, to earn loyalty and referrals, a brand has to stimulate an emotional reaction.

It's likely an important topic in the present competitive environment, in which most products are highly commoditized in terms of their quality and features, and competition tends to be on price - which is a losing game.  What differentiates one brand for another is the way that customers feel about it - a much squishier notion that seems to defy quantification, but nonetheless important, perhaps even critical.

The mystical qualities of emotion make it difficult to tract - to argue that a given brand makes people feel safe, sophisticated, or happy is largely speculative, and even asking the customers themselves does not produce reliable results.   Ask a person why they choose the iPhone rather than the Android and they will speak of the products features and ease of use - they will not mention that it makes them feel fashionable, that they feel others respect them for seeing them use it, that they fear being perceived as uncool if they use any other brand.   Suggest that this might be their real motivation, and they will likely deny it vehemently.

It's not just in the consumer market that emotions play a role.  Ask any IT manager why he chooses to use an Oracle database server and he will likewise explain the cold, sterile logic that a person who makes business decisions is expected to apply.   He will never admit that he fears taking a risk on a different brand that is cheaper and offers better features, or that he feels safe by using a brand that others use, or that he feels a sense of comfort in belonging to a clique of other executives who use the same brand.   But it's undeniable this comes into play.

In all, the authors make a very solid case for the influence of emotions on consumer behavior - but fall a bit flat with the advice for leveraging them.  How do you get beyond the pretenses to discover peoples' true emotions about a product?   How do you design a product to reinforce emotional outcomes?   How do you create an advertising message to appeal to or adjust emotional perceptions?     There's a strong case that these things ought to be done, but paltry advice on how to do it.

At yet, half credit for doing half the job.  My sense is that to understand human emotions, the reasons they arise, and the way that they can be reinforced or redirected, is likely more to do with social science (behavioral psychology) than business (marketing and product design), so further research in other areas may be needed to provide a plan that will enable us to successfully execute on these directives.