Emotional Information in Strategic Decisions

By Frank Parisi, Toyota Motor Europe Marketing & Engineering and Lucile Rameckers, project manager SKIM Analytical
presented at the ESOMAR Automotives Conference 2000

Abstract
This paper will discuss a method, called laddering, that can be used to gather "emotional" information. It is based on the means-end chain theory. The attractiveness of the laddering method lies in the easiness how emotional information can be integrated with quantitative information. The paper explains how the integration of emotional information with quantitative information can improve your decisions in different steps of the strategic planning process: from the understanding of your customer to the positioning and communication of your product.

Introduction
With all changes in the automotive industry it has become essential to keep control over the choice process, which is becoming more individual and emotionally and values driven. The image of the Brand and the Model is essential to activate the emotions.

Creating a Brand/Model image means establishing a certain promise or expectation among consumers. As the word "image" implies, emotions play a key role. People more and more choose a certain Brand/Model based on the emotional values that are expressed by it. One characteristic of emotions is that emotions are strongly embedded in people's minds. This strengthens the consumers' connection to the Brand/Model. This is certainly the case with cars, if only because it is an expensive product. In other words, a certain Brand/Model must distinguish itself from competition by conveying a relevant emotional message with relevant benefits. The best way to succeed here is to link this emotional message to physical characteristics of the car. As you know, consumers' needs form the key to build a distinguishing competitive advantage. Because when you distinguish yourself on aspects that are not relevant to the consumer, your advantage over the competition will be irrelevant, and your strategy will not work.

Techniques to gather emotional information
Emotional information is usually collected with qualitative interview methods. Qualitative interviewing is unstructured in the sense that the interviewer leaves much room for the respondent to talk and tries to get as much information as possible by probing. There are two drawbacks of this unstructured nature of qualitative interviewing:

1. The researcher has less control over the depth of the interview. A respondent might be very talkative and might discuss a subject in a very broad way without going into depth.
2. The information the researcher receives is also unstructured and therefore difficult to process (and thus expensive). As a consequence, qualitative interviews are often conducted with just a small sample. The intention is to explore the subject of investigation, rather than to be representative for the whole population, which is often done in a second phase. Individual-based coupling of the emotional information of the first phase with the quantitative information of the second phase is therefore not possible.

To overcome these problems, a different technique has been used to gather qualitative information in a more structured way: laddering. Laddering is a special method of interviewing and analysing that became popular in the late 1980's. Laddering is a qualitative interviewing technique, which is used to reveal the underlying reasons people have for buying a product. The advantage of laddering over classic qualitative interviewing is that the information is gathered and presented in a more structured way. This structured gathering of information also means that the data can be stored in a database, with the same type of information for each respondent. Therefore, a link can be made with quantitative data from the survey, which makes multivariate analysis possible. Since the information is so structured, large samples are no longer a problem for the analysis. So, now there is a possibility to integrate emotional information with quantitative information for large samples that are representative for the population.

Moreover, people generally find it difficult to talk about their emotions and feelings either because they do not want to tell an interviewer or they are unaware of it. In a laddering interview the respondent reveals this emotional information step by step: he/she starts to talk about concrete items, i.e. characteristics of cars like "number of doors", "modern design", or "price", and from this concrete level he/she goes on to a more abstract level: the benefits that he/she gets from the characteristic when driving the car. These benefits help the consumer to ultimately reach his or her goal in life (i.e. emotional values like happiness, financial security, having a good family life). Thus, would it normally be difficult for the consumer to directly make the connection between these product characteristics and the highly abstract emotional values, the laddering method does this step by step, making it easier for the consumer to express his/her motivation.

Strategic Decision Model
We will discuss how we can use the emotional information, which is gathered with this laddering technique in the different steps of strategy development to provide a better basis for making strategic decisions. By means of a strategic decision model, the steps to be discussed are respectively: 1) Understanding your customer; 2) Establishing your positioning; 3) Communicate your positioning. Simultaneously, we will illustrate the practical relevance of each step in the model by means of two case studies.

1) Understanding your customer

Understanding your customer is the first step in the strategic decision process: what are the customer's underlying motives to buy a certain car? The so-called means-end chain theory is based on the assumption that a consumer's motives drive his/her behaviour because these motives create certain needs. He/she wants to satisfy these needs and therefore chooses a car that, in one way or another, satisfies those needs by giving certain benefits to him/her. The specific characteristics of the car (i.e. car attributes), as well as the brand of the car, are capable of delivering these benefits in the individual's perception.

The laddering method is founded on the means-end chain theory, explaining the relationship between the product on the one hand and the consumer on the other.


Figure 1: Means-end chain theory

The figure below shows an example of a laddering-interview.


Figure 2: Example of a laddering-interview

Translating the above interview into a "means-end chain" gives the following result (see figure below – please note ladder charts are read from bottom to top).


Figure 3: Means-end chain for one respondent

Analysis of the laddering data of all respondents results in an aggregate means-end chains map, which can be seen as an "associative network" of a group of respondents. Basically, it is built by counting the numbers of direct links between concepts.

The means-end chain map can be used as a framework for deciding upon the strategic positions in the market. It shows how the characteristics, benefits and values are con- nected to each other. It is these connections or associations that add meaning to the concepts.


Figure 4: Part of a means-end chain map B-class cars

Figure 4 shows a part of the aggregate means-end chain map with regard to B-class cars. The size of the circles is an indication of the occurrences of the concepts. For example, when comparing the blue globes, which represent the car characteristics or attributes, it appears that 'fuel consumption' is more important than 'price' or 'modern look'. In other words, the number of people for whom 'fuel consumption' is an important characteristic is larger than the number of people for whom 'modern look' is important.

The links between the blue globes and the yellow globes show what benefits people get from the car attributes. The links between the yellow and pink circles tell us "why" people want to have these benefits; these reasons why follow directly from the underlying values and deeper feelings that are important in their lives. The thicker the link between two circles, the more respondents have made this link.

Looking at the total map, complete patterns of thought or considerations become clear. One consideration made in this map is: People want a car which is low on fuel consumption --> because it saves them money --> and they can spend the money on other things --> which make them feel happy and enjoy life. Another pattern of thought that can be found among people who drive B-class cars: the car must have a modern look --> because than they feel that the car corresponds to their personality --> which is a kind of self-expression for them.

2) Establishing your positioning
The second step in the strategic decision model is deciding which positioning strategy to follow. How should we combine the emotional information with population figures? Who should we target? How can we be appealing to our customer? How should we differentiate ourselves?

To determine the right positioning, we are looking for segments in the marketplace that provide the highest potential or the best opportunity to strengthen the car's positioning. Different considerations play a role in this:

1. Distance to the car: should we focus our positioning on the people who select the Brand/Model as their first choice, or rather aim at people who select it as their second or third choice? The first option would follow a lowest risk strategy, the latter one targets a larger group of consumers: taking the first choosers for granted and aiming your full attention towards the 2nd and 3rd choosers maximises the chance that you win them over.
2. How strong is the means-end chain (i.e. the link between the car characteristic, the benefit provided by that characteristic and the underlying value) embedded in people's minds? It is advisable to choose a strongly embedded chain to base the positioning on, because such a chain will easily be activated when people see an advertisement or commercial.
3. Ability to distinguish yourself; first of all, it is a must to meet the basic needs that people expect as a standard. More important however, is to focus on aspects that distinguish the car from its competition.

Example: How to position Toyota Yaris?
As explained before, the means-end chains represent an aggregate picture. It is of course interesting to find out if there are differences between the different groups that form the sample (and thereby the population). The fact that the qualitative information provided by laddering can be structured in a quantitative manner, allows statistical analysis, which will reveal just those differences.

As was previously shown in figure 4, an important means-end chain in the B-class segment is: low on fuel consumption --> saves money --> spend the money on other things --> feel happy and enjoy life.


Figure 5: Differences between Yaris-considerers and non-considerers

A more detailed analysis reveals an important difference between the people who consider the Toyota Yaris as one of the cars in their top-3, and the so-called non- considers (people who don't select the Toyota Yaris in their top 3). It shows that concepts like 'fuel consumption' and 'budget' are equally important for both considerers and non-considerers. However these concepts are important for different reasons. Non-considerers care about 'budget', because they aim for 'financial security'. Yaris-considerers care about 'budget', as they prefer 'to spend their money on other things', to satisfy 'hedonistic' needs.


Figure 6: Part of the Yaris-considerers map

Taking a closer look at the B-segment map reveals three ladders that are important for the Yaris considerers (see figure 6). Examination of differences within this group reveals that some considerations are predominantly made by young couples and singles, and others by families or empty nesters. The empty nesters' basic drive is a more rational one: they want to survive. For them the safety attributes of a car are important because it makes them feel protected which gives them peace of mind. Families basically want to enjoy life. They save money when they drive an economical car and they can spend that money on all kind of things that make life enjoyable. The young couples' and singles' underlying motivation is the drive to express themselves. They choose for a modern looking design to identify with the car; they want to have the feeling that the car is a reflection of their personality.

Based on the three considerations described earlier, we have determined which chain forms the best basis for positioning of the Yaris: modern look --> corresponding to personality --> self expression, was most promising. This chain is also very suitable for the communication strategy regarding the Yaris. This means that the people who are most likely to buy a Yaris can be addressed with concepts that are specifically aimed at their interests.

3) Communicate your strategy.
Finally, the last step in the strategy decision model is to develop a proper communication strategy. A pre-requisite for a communication strategy is that it fits a positioning strategy. For this last step our aim is to translate this positioning strategy into creative, executional concepts for advertisements. The ladders that are selected in step two of the strategic decision model: establish positioning, will be used to start building these advertising concepts. The figure below is a framework that structures the process to translate the means-end chains into advertising concepts. Of course, people's creativity is always needed and cannot be replaced by a model. However the framework offers you a handle to develop a communication strategy based on the laddering results.


Figure 7: Communication model

In the figure one can easily recognise the three levels of a means-end chain: characteristics, benefits and values, respectively message elements, consumer benefits and driving force in the communication model (figure 7). The connection between the message elements and the benefits to the consumer is called the Product Bridge; the connection between consumer benefits and the leverage point is called the Personal Relevance Bridge and the connection between the leverage point and the driving force is called the value bridge. The leverage point refers to the way by which the ad will activate the value / feeling of focus.

The purpose of the model is to concretise and integrate the Product Bridge, the Personal Relevance Bridge and the Value Bridge. To do this, the question to ask is: "What will cause the connection to be made?" The verbatims that the respondents made during the ladder interview will be of great help when trying to answer this question.

The executional framework on the right hand side in the figure refers to the tone and style by which the message is communicated. But of course, at the same time it provides the details for the advertisement / commercial in development. For cars for example, a slice of life situation in which the car is used offers infinite possibilities to fill in the details.

How to communicate the positioning of Toyota Yaris Verso?


Figure 8: Strategy-to-creative translation: the model

In case of the Toyota Yaris Verso it was the combination of two means-end chains: "care for family" and "self fulfilment" (see figure 8), which provided a viable opportunity. The positioning of the Yaris Verso should be within the family context, but breathing the sphere of self-fulfilment. The multiple purpose of the vehicle should be emphasised as the main benefit of the Yaris Verso.


Figure 9: Explanations of Toyota Yaris Verso Means-End Chain (1)


Figure 10: Explanations of Toyota Yaris Verso Means-End Chain (2)

The laddering technique generates very complete explanations why people find some car characteristics important. The verbatims explain in consumer phrasing how the people who form the target group discuss and perceive the concepts that make up this unique pattern of thought. It reveals the exact meaning of the circles to the consumer. These meanings and verbatims are used to translate the ladders into advertising concepts. Some of the descriptions that define the concepts in figure 8 are shown in figures 9 and 10. These explanations can be used to fill in the blanks of a creative strategy with actual statements made by consumers.

Up to now, we only spoke of advertisements, but obviously it's possible to structure all kinds of communication with method. For instance, a press release from Toyota contained the following elements:

" ... The new Toyota Yaris Verso is a new, compact Toyota with style, which offers the necessary space and performance especially for young families. This car is suited for many purposes and offers extreme driving pleasure and comfort. ... On the one hand the car complies with the transport needs of a young family and on the other hand the owner of the Yaris Verso takes a definite stand concerning the styling ..."


Figure 11: Toyota Yaris Verso - positioning model

In this press release, various elements of the original Means-End Chain map of the Yaris Verso are included. For instance, " ... the car complies with the transport needs of a young family ..." comes from the concepts 'large interior', 'many things to transport for the family' and 'care for family'. Another example is " ... the owner of the Yaris Verso takes a definite stand concerning the styling" originates from the concepts 'self-fulfilment'. People do not have to think only about their family, it is good to think about yourself too. Using the actual descriptions of the consumers makes the message more appealing, and thus more effective.

The above mentioned examples are a result of car clinics conducted for the two car models. A number of parties were involved during and after these clinics: the client (Toyota), the research agency conducting the clinics, the research agency responsible for the Laddering part of the clinic (SKIM), and the ad agency. Beforehand, there were several meetings and discussions to determine the set-up of the clinics, and the role of each party. After (part of) the clinic(s), a preliminary de-brief was held, to discuss further actions and analysis required by the research agencies. Between preliminary de-brief and final presentation, both research agencies co-operated intensively, to form a joint proposal for positioning scenarios. At the final presentation, all parties (including the ad agency) were present to review the results, and discuss further options for the positioning. Finally, client and ad agency fine- tuned the positioning and developed the communication strategy.

Conclusion
In this paper we discussed the use of emotional information by means of a three-step Strategic Decision Model and we have elaborated the model for practical purposes, using the introduction of the Toyota Yaris and the Toyota Yaris Verso as examples. The three steps of the model are respectively: understand your customer, establish the positioning, and communicate that positioning. In the elaboration of each step it is emphasised how information about people's values and underlying motivations can be used. Both in theory and in practice, as both examples show, this approach proved to be very effective and valuable: it not only supports strategic decisions, but it also forms a practical guideline, which still leaves sufficient room for creative applications.

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