Foreword

Donna J. Sturgess

President, Buyology Inc,
formerly Global Head of Innovation, GlaxoSmithKline

For most of my professional career, marketers have worked to create value in products by developing rational features and benefits, like new or faster functionality. The fundamental weakness with this approach is that, as consumers, our responses to rational features account for only 15 percent of all the decisions we make. The rest of the decision process operates subconsciously, where emotion dominates. The result of the traditional marketing approach is that customers experience a “sense” gap.

It is time for business to come to its senses and recognize that emotion is the single greatest lever it has in accelerating market performance. Emotions are how customers derive meaning and value in any product that we use. Authors Peter Boatwright and Jonathan Cagan argue that it is emotional content that drives product awareness, stimulates word-of-mouth, and motivates repurchase. When a company leverages emotion, the company benefits before the customer purchases the product, during the customers’ use of the product, and after the consumers’ product experience ends and they seek a new one.

This doesn’t happen by luck. Product emotions must be designed. Companies must intentionally design the emotion-based experience that customers desire into the core of their business, leading to products that evoke a positive emotional response by exceeding expectations on important benefit dimensions. Emotion results in an increase in customer attention, persuasion, and memory retention. The more touchpoints the consumer experiences in a product or service, the greater the level of interaction, emotional engagement, and impact on their long-term memory of the product. When robust rational and emotional strategies synchronize, the resulting momentum thrusts the business forward, resulting in the acceleration of market performance.

Since you picked up this book, you no doubt recognize there is something missing in business strategies today. As you read the insightful research and examples the authors provide, I offer you four keys to consider: First, emotion matters in every type of business; next, more sensory interaction in the customer experience is better than less; and third, emotion has to be managed strategically.

Built to Love proves that emotion pays off, and it presents an approach to break emotion into attributes that provide the basis for an emotion-based strategy. Toward the end, the book extends to a wide range of disciplines that gives you a grand finale fireworks display of emotion and its value within the context of any business. Oh yes, and the fourth key that you will realize from this book is that emotion results in increased profit!

So what are you waiting for?