Understanding the emotions of consumers
Understanding the emotions of consumers
Nuremberg, June 3, 2009 – In order to better understand consumers and their emotions, GfK-Nürnberg e.V. is developing an automatized, software-based system for recording facial muscle movements, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) and Professor Klaus R. Scherer of the University of Geneva.
Developing innovative methods is of central importance to the GfK Group, in order that it can offer its clients new and progressive approaches to market research. GfK is currently working on a procedure that records and analyzes human emotions via automatized and software-based detection of facial expressions. GfK-Nürnberg e.V., in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS) and Professor Klaus R. Scherer, Professor of Psychology at the University of Geneva and director of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Affective Sciences, a system that precisely records even the smallest muscle movements in people’s faces. Since emotions can often be expressed in facial expressions, emotions can be recorded spontaneously and in real time using this system.
This new technology is currently being deployed in a feasibility study, in order to investigate how the feelings "interest”, "enjoyment” and "disgust” can be read from facial expressions by recording even very subtle muscle movements. Since people’s emotions have an influence on their cognitive processes and therefore also on their purchase decisions, measuring emotions has become an increasingly important issue within market research. In the areas of communications research or new product development, a system that measures emotions accurately and is workable in practice can provide new and unique insights: what a person actually feels when watching an advertisement, how the experienced communication affects the emotional image of a brand or which emotions a person experiences when testing a new product – these are only a few examples of how the new automatized measuring of emotions could be applied. Once the feasibility study has been completed, it is intended to develop the new system so that it recognizes all emotions that are relevant for market research. A further developmental stage could be the combination of the automatized and software-based detection of facial expressions with verbal measurement of emotions, i.e. vocal analysis.
