The Dark Side of Community Development:
Influencing Emotions, Bodies, and Societies

Assignment 3: Emotions, Bodies, and Societies

Kimberley A. Ilott

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Athabasca University

MAIS615: The Business of Emotions

Dr. Theresia Williams

December 2022

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Abstract

Through discussing the interplay between emotion, bodies, and societies, this paper sets out to identify and discuss how organizations have embraced the digital environment, leveraging the use of social media to elicit emotional responses from targeted consumer populations. Specifically, this paper provides discussion and supporting literature for the following research questions: (1) How do organizations manipulate external social environments to stimulate buyer reaction? (2) How does emotional branding affect consumer reason and their purchase impulsiveness? and (3) How does the relationship between pain and pleasure affect a consumer’s thought process for purchases? It is not the intention of this paper or the discussion within to outline the validity or merit of the mixing of science, technology, and human emotion, rather, the goal of this paper is to identify how, and the impacts of, organizational leveraging of these elements to strategically target consumer basic human emotional needs.   

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Introduction

Human emotion expressed over digital environments plays an increasingly important role in the understanding of the impact of emotion and feelings on behaviours, this understanding, as well as the data and analytics that result, are shaping business procedures, policies, and decisions (Chung & Zeng, 2020). In this paper, I explore how organizations have embraced the digital environment, leveraging the use of social media to elicit emotional responses from their targeted consumer populations; specifically, this paper reviews the following research questions: (1) How do organizations manipulate external social environments to stimulate buyer reaction? (2) How does emotional branding affect consumer reason and their purchase impulsiveness? and (3) How does the relationship between pain and pleasure affect a consumer’s thought process for purchases?

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Digital environments have enabled far-reaching interaction. The constant stream of visual stimuli has caused ‘influencer’ dynamics to rise, with organizations capitalizing on a multipronged approach to reaching, or marketing to, their target consumer populations. Organizations use the digital environments to play into the emotional memory bank, for better or worse, of consumers. In the current digital age, as well as the future digital landscape, corporate leaders are, and will be, jockeying to position their organizations and brands as front runners in the race to win consumers. Business strategy surrounding technology, marketing, consumer data and analytics, and general socialization will become increasingly more important. However, progress and innovation are not without issue; as society continues to navigate through the ever-present siege of technology, exploitation of select populations as well as the delineation of moral or ethical issues related to operations that leverage science and human emotion for the sole purpose of increasing sales will be placed under scrutiny. Through discussing consumerism in the digital age, the infiltration of human reason with the buying of emotion, and the impact social media has had on emotional interpretations, it becomes evident that the understanding of what is feasible for, as well as the ripple effects of, focusing on consumer emotion and related human behaviour has only just begun.

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The Digital Age and Consumerism

The human brain is a network of neurons and is subject to neuron cell-to-cell signaling; this signaling can be both chemical and electrical. These ‘signals’ can be disrupted by the external environment that a person happens to be in or exposed to; this can include what a person sees, a perceived memory, a current thought, or an elicited emotional response. Given this knowledge, it seems reasonable that a collection of signaling cells could create a sudden strong reaction in a person which results in the production of an action from the person (Lewis et al., 2000). With this understanding of a human’s limbic brain, it is easy to see how organizations could stimulate buyer reaction through the manipulation of an external social environment. In recent years, organizations have shifted to emotional marketing, marketing that targets their consumer populations in the hope of eliciting a reaction, ideally a reaction that results in a sale. Cansoli (2010) highlights that purchasing choices and decisions are the result of careful analysis of rational and emotional aspects, and that marketers aim to arouse emotions in consumers to induce them to buy.

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Organizations have latched onto the idea of consumer emotional marketing and have put more focus on what is now called, neuromarketing. Science of the brain, neuroscience, has crossed boundaries with marketing, resulting in neuromarketing; organizations are using science to target a person’s limbic neuron signaling to, ideally, elicit an action of buying from their targeted consumer population. Neuromarketing is still a relatively new concept and one that will likely morph over the years to come; it was first identified as a research field as neuroscientists studied participant brain behaviour through various brain imagery technology, and as technology advances, the ability to research consumers’ behaviour will grow. Neuromarketing is not without its issues though, in addition to being difficult to conduct, ethical concerns stemming from the potential manipulation have been raised as the practice affects “consumers’ ability to choose not to consume marketed products, leaving the individuals unable to resist such efforts and making them easy targets for [a] company’s [marketing] campaigns” (Fortunato et al., 2014). Ethical concerns run deeper than the potential for manipulation, there is the idea that the ability to capitalize on a person’s inner most thoughts and emotions is a violation of privacy, and that this violation could ultimately lead to the exploitation of vulnerable populations. Fortunato et al. (2014) go on to suggest that the use of neuromarketing could be an operational tool used by organizations as a strategy for the clarification and understanding of consumer behaviour, and its ability to potentially identify consumer subconscious needs, thus creating better selling features for the consumer such as more attractive packaging, better pricing, and more effective brand positioning.

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An organization’s emotional intelligence toward, and understanding of, its target consumer population (how consumers feel about a product, service, or business) can have a large impact on consumer engagement, behaviour, and purchasing (Straker & Wrigley, 2016). Understanding where a consumer will go, or how a consumer will react, based off data and analytics, can be an incredibly powerful organizational strategy for organizations to employ when looking at how to affect an external environment. Through the understanding of end user stakeholder groupings as well as the associated end user ‘stories’ (agile methodology), organizations can better target specific stakeholder groups by reviewing needs and supporting any business decision making with defined data and analytics. Organizations have an abundance of areas where analytic insights could provide business value based on consumer behavioural and emotional intelligence; the challenge is to understand where to apply the insights (LaValle et al., 2011). As Thomas Davenport (2013) suggests in his Harvard Business Review article:

If your company makes things, moves things, consumes things, or works with customers, you have increasing amounts of data on those activities. Every device, shipment, and consumer leave a trail. You have the ability to analyze those sets of data for the benefit of customers and markets. You also have the ability to embed analytics and optimization into every business decision made at the front lines of your operations.

 

Organizations that can understand their consumers’ behaviour through the leveraging of data and analytics can influence the external environment that their consumer populations are immersed in. The leveraging of consumer data and analytics is not new but the ‘how’ is rapidly evolving as technology advances; in today’s digital era, organizational leadership that uses focused marketing strategies, built upon data-enriched decision-making, position their organizations for successful interactions, and ideally, set up long-term loyalty through endearment, with their targeted consumer populations.

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Infiltrating Reason with the Buying of Emotion

While the neuromarketing phenomenon is relatively new to the organizational strategy scene, organizations have been playing upon consumer emotions for decades. The traditional arena of marketing has, historically, been founded upon a push approach; an organization has a product or service and through the pushing of the good or service externally, the organization hopes to cultivate brand loyalty. Along the way, organizations started to increase their focus on consumer emotion when advertising a product, in brand promotion activities, and in building organizational culture. This organizational focus on consumer emotions highlights the theory that emotions can influence our behaviour, or rather, our reasoning and judgement during specific instances of personal decision-making. Individuals tend to make “good or sound decisions within minutes or seconds” (Marsden, 2022) and one might conclude that the quickness of a good or sound decision is likely a biproduct of an engrained sense of feeling or emotion, which suggests that decision-making is not subject to “pure reason” (Marsden, 2022). Damasio suggests that the immediate yes or no, or good versus bad, response stems from a person’s feelings that was created by mental image they’ve conjured based off an experience observed, and recorded, by one of our five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell). Marsden’s (2022) writing supports this thought when speaking to bodily feelings, or somatic markers as Damasio calls them:

…Most somatic markers that we use for rational decision making were probably created in our brains during our education and socialization, by connecting specific classes of stimuli with specific classes of somatic states. Somatic markers are based on the process of secondary emotions – they are acquired through experience.

 

Building off this idea of somatic markers, or bodily feelings, that drive decision-making, how does emotional branding affect consumer reason around their purchasing habits? Organizations need to find the right language, visuals, and imagery to reach consumers emotionally; this ability to connect with consumers in such a way draws directly back to Damasio’s thought that a person’s immediate reaction, good or bad, stems from a memory, consciously or subconsciously, that was built upon an interaction the person experienced with their bodily senses. Marc Gobe (2010) wrote in his book, Emotional Branding, that organizations work to have brands engage consumers on the emotional level through stimulating and evoking emotion, thus bringing the brand to life for people, leading to a deeper lasting connection between consumer and brand. By targeting a consumer’s emotions, a consumer feels bonded to an organization’s brand, and can incorporate the brand into their self-identity (Rifkin, 2001).

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The Encyclopedia Britannica (2020) states that reason is the process of drawing logical inferences, and is in opposition to sensation, perception, desire; in other words, the opposite of feeling and emotion. Encyclopedia Britannica’s definition of reason clearly spars reason against emotion, but as we learned through Damasio’s work, a person’s reason stems directly from an emotional response or stimuli. In this sense, organizations employing emotional branding to cultivate an emotional reaction or experience for its consumers are, potentially, heavily influencing consumer reason, which may, for better or worse, result in impulsive purchasing based on brand loyalty rather than logical inferences. This, once again, raises ethical concerns surrounding the exploitation of vulnerable populations, for example, individuals that suffer from mood disorders. Faber and Christenson (1996) studied consumption disorders, specifically compulsive buying, through the reported mood states prior to and during shopping excursions. Their findings identified that compulsive buyers experienced more extreme moods, both positive and negative, and were more likely to use buying behaviour to manage undesirable mood states. According to Statistics Canada’s 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) on Mental Health, 5.4% of the Canadian population aged 15 years and over reported symptoms that met the criteria for a mood disorder. Reviewing the findings from Faber and Christenson’s study, along with the knowledge of the prevalence of mood disorders, it is evident that organizational ethical boundaries could blur in the race to be a frontrunner in the emotional branding arena.

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The Impact of Social Media

Digital age consumerism and an organization’s ability to infiltrate consumer reason through emotional branding would not be as effective without the prevalence of social media. As of January 2022, there was 4.62 billion social media users globally; this number grew by 10% (424 million new users) since January 2019 and equates to roughly 58% of the World’s total population (Financial Post, 2022).  As previously discussed, organizations are using emotional branding to reach consumers, leading to the influence of consumer reaction, good or bad. Understanding that emotions are social phenomena (Marsden, 2022) highlights how impactful social media is on today’s consumer population.  Social media, consisting of many digital platforms for the purpose of information sharing, enables people to interact with each other, this interaction includes organizational marketers and their ease of engagement with consumers. Appel et al. (2019) state that, in practical terms, social media is another digital marketing channel that marketers are able to use to communicate with their target consumer population, but broadly, social media consists of digital places where people conduct significant parts of their lives.

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With consumers spending a large amount of time on social media, and with the potential to have social media be a significant aspect of a consumer’s life or lifestyle, it would make sense then that consumers could be exposed to experiences, whether directly or indirectly, that could create mental images, that when recalled upon at a later date, may influence a consumer’s response, as alluded to by Damasio.  Given the potential for strong emotions, whether in the moment or at a future point in time, both pleasure (feelings of good) and pain (feelings of bad) can impact a consumer’s thought process for purchases. With emotions being a social phenomenon, bodily states and external events are linked and established through experiences of reward and punishment, or rather, pleasure and pain (Marsden, 2022). Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, among others, may have started with innocent intentions but have since grown to become a main vehicle, if not the main vehicle, for consumerism and the feeding of one’s ego, or both through the association of self-worth being based upon popular brands, likes received, and number of followers. As Marsden (2022) highlights:

The criticism that human emotions have become commercialized through emotional labour and emotional marketing is an acknowledged, if regretted, fact of business. But there is a much deeper and sharper criticism to be made: the emotions of the modern individual, in themselves, are thoroughly commercial in that they developed in conjunction with capitalism and made it possible.

 

As Ben-Ze’ev (2000) suggests, pleasure and pain, or rather social emotions, are not natural but learned; that being said, while pleasure and pain are not innate, the disposition to them is very individualistic. Consumers learn to associate these social emotions with experiences but how big of an impact the particular experience has depends entirely on the individual. So how would these social emotions present themselves in today’s social media landscape? Perhaps, a social media blogger has had their article go viral, it is highly likely that the blogger would associate this experience with pleasure. In contrast, the same blogger could have had their article be highly criticized by peers, and it would not be far-fetched to assume that the criticism would be associated with pain.  This pleasure and pain relationship can translate to the average consumer; as an example, a consumer associates a type of name brand sneaker with their self-worth, as such, they are eager to purchase the new sneaker that was released by the brand, if they were successful in their hunt for the new sneaker, it would be felt as pleasure, alternatively, if all the new sneakers were sold out prior to them being able to purchase, it would be felt as pain. Today’s understanding of pleasure and pain are significantly different than historically what has been considered pleasurable or painful. The social media phenomena, ushered in by the digital era, has drastically changed views of morality, which drives a person’s innate disposition to pleasure and pain. Historically, pain was considered the way to elicit growth, to wash your soul of your sins, while this religious undertone likely still holds true for a portion of the World’s population, pain can encompass any number of emotions, many of which Ben-Ze’ev speaks to, such as grief and embarrassment. In the social media landscape, when a consumer’s self-worth is so closely tied to digital metrics (likes, comments, follows, shares, etc.), the delicate, and fickle, balance between pleasure and pain can be easily swayed, leading to impacts to a consumer’s thought process surrounding purchases.

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Conclusion

“Authentic feelings are being displaced by synthetically created quasi-emotions—emotions recycled from the past or abstracted from other social contexts” (Marsden, 2022). While the human being has innated biological knowledge, secondary or social emotions become ingrained through learned, individualistic, social experiences. The global society, and its economy, is connected and tied together, more than ever, and as science and technology advanced, the interest in understanding consumer populations to grow the economy has increased substantially. In this paper, I discussed how organizations have embraced the advancements in science and technology, leveraging the digital era, human behaviour analytics, and the growing use of social media to elicit emotional responses from their targeted consumer populations. Organizations manipulate external social environments, with the end goal being the stimulation of buyer reaction, by capitalizing on new neuroscience techniques that have the possibility of heightening the effectiveness of emotional marketing and fostering the capture of consumer data and analytics.

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Additionally, it was discussed how emotional branding, or the buying of emotion, affects consumer reason and purchase impulsiveness. Emotional branding enables organizations to imprint messaging on consumers brains that act as mental flags with the hopeful intention of influencing consumer behaviour, reason, and judgement during decision-making related to purchases. Hinging on the understanding that building an emotional bond with a consumer population, both consciously and subconsciously, can lead to long-term brand relationships through the body’s biological ability to imprint experiences observed by one of the five senses. Lastly, it was identified how the immense dependency upon social media thrusts emotions into the spotlight, specifically, this paper highlighted how the relationship between pleasure and pain can alter a consumer’s thought process for purchases. Through the prevalence of use, consumers are exposed to experiences, directly and indirectly, that could create the necessary imprints, or mental images, that may influence a consumer’s response. Knowing that emotion is a social phenomenon, the idea of pleasure and pain are more prevalent than ever before, with an almost constant feed of either emotion at any given time through the various digital platforms available. With consumer self-worth tied so closely to digital metrics, the fickle sway between pain and pleasure can dictate consumer behaviour and ultimately their purchasing habits.

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The mixing of science and business is not without its issues, most of which are ethical. In recent years, there has been focused attention on the ethics behind increased targeted marketing or business operations as there are concerns that it sets apart vulnerable populations and provides organizations with the opportunity to exploit the vulnerable for the sake of economic gain. In years to come, with continued advancements in science and technology, organizations are likely to continue to leverage the digital era, human behaviour analytics, and the habitual use of social media to elicit emotional responses from their target consumer populations, but as with any advancements in science and technology, the unknown will also foster continued dialogue regarding ethics and human behaviour.

 

References

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2020). The future of social media in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(1), 79-95.

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Ben–Ze’ev, A. (2000). Analyzing Emotions. The Subtlety of Emotions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Chung, W., & Zeng, D. (2020). Dissecting emotion and user influence in social media communities: An interaction modeling approach. Information & Management, 57(1), 103108.

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Consoli, D. (2010). A new concept of marketing: The emotional marketing. BRAND. Broad Research in Accounting, Negotiation, and Distribution, 1(1), 52-59.

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Davenport, T. H. (2013). Analytics 3.0. Harvard business review, 91(12), 64-72.

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Encyclopedia Britannica. (2020). reason. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. https://www.britannica.com/topic/reason

Faber, R. J., & Christenson, G. A. (1996). In the mood to buy: Differences in the mood states experienced by compulsive buyers and other consumers. Psychology & Marketing, 13(8), 803-819.

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Financial Post. (2022). Digital 2022 Report Finds Social Media Users Now Equivalent to 58 Percent of the World’s Total Population. Business Wire. Postmedia Network Inc. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220126005361/en/

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Fortunato, V. C. R., Giraldi, J. D. M. E., & de Oliveira, J. H. C. (2014). A review of studies on neuromarketing: Practical results, techniques, contributions, and limitations. Journal of Management Research, 6(2), 201

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Gobe, M. (2010). Emotional branding: The new paradigm for connecting brands to people. Simon and Schuster.

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LaValle, S., Lesser, E., Shockley, R., Hopkins, M. S., & Kruschwitz, N. (2011). Big data, analytics, and the path from insights to value. MIT sloan management review, 52(2), 21-32.

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Lewis, T., Amini, F., & Lannon, R. (2000). Kits, Cats, Sacks, and Uncertainty: How the Brain’s Basic Structure Poses Problems for Love. A General Theory of Love. New York: Random House.

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Marsden, R. (2022). The Limbic Brain. Unit 5: Emotions, Bodies, Societies. MAIS 615 The Business of Emotions. Athabasca University.

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Marsden, R. (2022). Reason and Emotion Revisited. Unit 5: Emotions, Bodies, Societies. MAIS 615 The Business of Emotions. Athabasca University.

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Marsden, R. (2022). Pain and Pleasure. Unit 5: Emotions, Bodies, Societies. MAIS 615 The Business of Emotions. Athabasca University.

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Rifkin, J. (2001). The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where all of Life is a Paid-For Experience. Tarcher.

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Statistics Canada. (2012). Canadian Community Health Survey on Mental Health. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/chronic-diseases/mental-illness/what-depression.html

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Straker, K., & Wrigley, C. (2016). Designing an emotional strategy: Strengthening digital channel engagements. Business Horizons, 59(3), 339-346.