Summary
Defining and improving customer experience is a growing priority for market research because experience is replacing quality as the competitive battleground for marketing. Service quality is an outgrowth of the total quality management (TQM) movement of the 1980s and suffers from that movement’s focus on the provider rather than the value derived by customers. Researchers today state that customer experience is generated through a longer process of company–customer interaction across multiple channels, generated through both functional and emotional clues. Our research with practitioners indicates that most firms use customer satisfaction, or its derivative the Net Promoter Score, to assess their customers’ experiences. We question this practice based on the conceptual gap between these measures and the customer experience. In IJMR 53, 6 (2011), we introduce a new measure appropriate for the modern conceptualisation of customer experience: the customer experience quality (EXQ) scale. In this article we extend that work and compare EXQ’s predictive power with that of customer satisfaction. We establish that EXQ better explains and predicts both, loyalty and recommendations, than customer satisfaction.

Summary
Identifying relevant attributes or variables is the first objective of conjoint analysis in market research. As a result of technological development, today it is common for researchers to use sequential experimental methods for adjusting design factors in successive phases. In particular, in the field of consumer behaviour these models are used predominantly for assessing subjective perceptions relating to the attributes of different products with high sensorial components (e.g. food, drinks and personal care products). This paper illustrates the use of response surface methodology in conjoint experiments, allowing sequential research in which the evaluation of a choice set determines the weight of factors in the next choice set and continues until the optimum combination is achieved. To this end we have carried out a computer simulation to determine the optimal combination of ingredients for a sauce. The simulation shows that the model needs only a few steps to reach the optimal combination of ingredients. This result indicates that response surface methodology can be considered a useful tool in the field of market research and, in particular, in studies on consumer behaviour.

Summary
This study is an excerpt from a larger work that explores changes in the purchase process for consumer goods (automobiles, electronics, and groceries) brought about by digital and social media. Commissioned by the Advertising Research Foundation; conducted by Communispace, comScore, Converseon, and Firefly Millward Brown; sponsored by General Motors, Google, Kraft, Motorola, and Young & Rubicam; and with guidance from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the qualitative, quantitative, and social-listening research was conducted in 2011. Findings indicate that digital and social media have empowered consumers and that brands have an important role in facilitating conversations among consumers and themselves, openly sharing the values that will help consumers connect with them and with one another.

Summary
With innovation, research concepts are often explored in research environments where real world context and time to think are in short supply. This creates a situation where logic and reason can have an unrealistic share of voice when ideas are being explored and evaluated. In 2009-2010, BT, the telecoms company, sought to understand how best to position its innovative (for the UK market) fibre optic broadband product. The desire was to get beyond the product facts of headline speed and connection reliability, and to really understand the human impact of supercharged internet connectivity. Using a future-facing global study and a video-enabled blog community, the research managed to use context to answer the brief, galvanise the client and inspire a successful TV ad.

Summary
This study addresses kiosk-based shopping behavior among female consumers. The authors sought to build upon existing promotional retail research that showed and explained gender differences in experiential shopping environments. Upon confirming extant literature findings of gender differences as they apply to perceptions of shopping risk in kiosk environments, the current study manipulates levels of anticipated regret for males and females when shopping in kiosks versus traditional department stores in a between-subjects experimental design incorporating a diverse non-student sample. The robust gender difference indicates that targeted promotions for kiosks are critical to the reduction of possible regret and risk perceptions, especially for females.

Summary
Emotional branding is defined here as the consumer’s attachment of a strong, specific, usage-relevant emotion—such as Bonding, Companionship, or Love—to the brand. The present large-scale survey of buyers of frequently purchased consumer products finds that, for such products, full-strength emotional branding is attained among, at most, only about 25 per cent of the brand’s buyers but that, if attained, it pays off massively in terms of personal share of purchases. Emotional branding may well be more widely effective for high involvement, positively motivated products (not surveyed here). It seems that advertising can generate the expectancy of strong, specific, emotional attachment, but very favorable brand usage experience must follow if this approach is to be successful. In general, the traditional benefit-based “USP” advertising strategy seems less risky with lesser though more widespread effectiveness.

Summary
A discussion of online anthropology as a way of gaining fresh understanding of customer behavior. The case study used to illustrate this point is for Sprint, a US mobile provider. This online anthropology project involved social listening, data harvesting and customer segmentation, and led to changes in Sprint's product development, HR policy, in-store environment and customer service, as well as its marketing communications. Since the effort launched, Sprint has seen major growth in brand advocacy.

Summary
This paper argues that not only is it possible to conduct market research without asking questions but it's also the best way to understand what people do. It covers behavioural economics, observational and ethnographic research, social media research and innovative qualitative techniques in order to show the possibilities of research without questions. It also provides a unifying framework for considering behaviour and decision making, a series of studies conducted across these areas by BrainJuicer and a selection of cases from Allstate Insurance that work with these techniques.

Summary
This ESOMAR paper looks at how to integrate behavioural economics insights with conjoint analysis, thereby making predictions more valid while maintaining the core advantages of conjoint analysis. More generally, the authors argue that results can only be improved by merging conjoint analysis with other research disciplines, rather than merely attempting to develop even better conjoint analysis. They also discuss a 'General Algorithm for Patching Conjoint Analyses' tool that corrects the main cognitive and motivational distortions which occur in conjoint analysis.

Summary
Emotional advertising is generally believed to be persuasive. However, not all emotional advertising is equally effective. Previous research has illustrated the importance of the pleasure dimension of emotions in the sense that positive emotions usually induce more positive attitudes than negative emotions. This paper deals with another dimension of emotions – the ego-other-focus dimension of emotions – referring to the degree to which these emotions make people see themselves as independent from or interdependent with others in a specific situation. Our findings indicate that, for a privately consumed product, ads evoking an ego-focused emotion score better than ads evoking an other-focused emotion, whereas the reverse is true for a publicly consumed product. This match between product and emotion does not matter for introverts, but is important for extravert people. As such, we show that not only the pleasure dimension, but also the ego-other-focus dimension of emotions determines the effectiveness of emotional advertising.