Emotional Marketing: Buying Emotions

Most buyer decisions are based on emotions and the creation of an emotional connection with the consumer. The sale of products has gone on evolving over time, going through different stages. From sales through inertia in the years after the Second World War, to the creation of sales or commercial departments, to the creation of marketing strategies, which were focused on discovering the needs of the market to then satisfy them. Nowadays, we can also observe a substantial change due to the ease of access to information, where it is no longer products that are bought or sold, but rather sensations. We buy emotions.

Creating more interesting and emotionally intense experiences is the challenge for today’s marketers.

What is emotional marketing?

Emotional marketing has recently popped up as the field of knowledge oriented towards mobilizing feelings, values, and emotions in people with the goal of creating attitudes and actions that are favorable to a particular product. In other words, emotional marketing examines what emotions to satisfy in order to then offer products to do just that. Therefore looking for a strategic position, a place in the client or consumer’s mind, trying to conquer their emotions. In this way, companies are creating expectations in individuals through sensations.

It was recently confirmed that almost 99 percent of the time, we buy a product as a result of an impulse, feeling, or emotion that only has some reasonable logic behind it. This is why there is emotional publicity, which plays with the creation of emotional motivation in the consumer. It is a communication tool through which brands distinguish themselves based on their emotional effects. In order to achieve this, a company follows a series of steps like the identification of the consumer’s needs and desires, establishing a relationship between their interests and the product’s intangible properties, and a communication strategy that is capable of positioning the product to take advantage of this. Keeping in mind as well that there is not a significant distinction made between the tangible and intangible effects of the product.

Almost every product offers similar advantages. For this reason, steps have been made towards the spread of emotional publicity, emphasizing above all else values associated with the inner desires, longings, and aspirations of possible consumers. The key is therefore in creating emotional relationships.

The products of the future will call on our hearts and not so much on our minds, the company responding to the question: I have a client, how can I help them?

Consumers and emotions

Both economists and scientists are currently studying individual behavior and finding that humans are emotional, which companies then translate into the field of purchasing decisions. And this is where the new discipline known as Neuromarketing has emerged. It is based on the study of the brain and the understanding of the unconscious pattern that rules the purchasing process. Experts have argued that consumers’ attention is captured through the creation of images that cause emotions and not through rational arguments. So the more intense the emotion created, the more profound the neurological connection in the consumer’s brain will be. In this sense, the brands and companies have the goal of covering the expectations with products that are capable of reaching the heart, therefore making it necessary to know how the consumer thinks, what they feel, and what sensations can be produced in order to evoke their dreams.

In other words, emotional marketing strategies propose that in order to leave an impression on the consumer, you have to provide stimulating networks based on pleasure and well being, accompanying the individual in special, unique moments and situations, the differences between one brand and another being found in feelings.

Image courtesy of Guillermo Jauregui