by Igor Starczak | Sep 30, 2021 | SentiBrand
In marketing, advertising and customer communication, negative emotions tend to be overlooked. No wonder. Companies, brand owners or agencies – everyone prefers to know what positively attaches customers to a brand or product, what customers have a good experience, an experience, what finally makes a consumer a customer and why they return to buy later. Sales are what counts! But from a research perspective, negative emotions are valuable.
Analyzing negative emotions is important from the brand’s point of view, to say the least. Suppose a product sells badly, or an advertising campaign is not successful. Then, by studying the emotions of customers, you can find out what they feel and how this translates into the perception of the product or campaign. Today we are talking about why it is worthwhile to study negative emotions in marketing and communications as well.
At the outset, let’s clarify beyond a shadow of a doubt: we will treat the phrase “negative emotions” in this article exclusively as a key word (and even a crowbar word!). All emotions that arise in us are necessary, and all of them also have their concrete consequences in action, so they are positive. By negative emotions we will mean here those whose common social perception has a contrasting connotation opposite to concepts like joy, surprise, or admiration.
Among the eight basic emotions (as in previous articles – we talk about them in the context of Plutchik’s theory), those having a negative or rather unpleasant to feel context include sadness, anger, fear, and disgust.
Sadness
It is an emotion of loss. It will appear, for example, in a situation of loss of an important person, loss of material resources, inability to achieve a goal set for oneself or to satisfy a particular need. It is usually accompanied by other unpleasant emotions, sensations, and reactions from the body.
Sadness is one of the most essential human emotions for the reason that without it it is impossible… to feel joy. It also indicates what is significant to a person and can be a motivating factor to transform this emotion into action and achieve the desired goal. Related behaviors to sadness include passivity, numbness, isolation, surrender, and self-criticism.
Anger
This is an emotion that people are very much afraid of. At the same time, however, it is the one that in a crisis gives a person the most energy and motivation to act. Anger initiates fight or flight. It builds tension and alertness, causes the release of adrenaline – so it corresponds to the physiological response to stress.
Anger is a signal of disagreement and a response to threats. It appears when boundaries are violated and when needs are not met. It can lead to impulsive confrontation and even aggression against the cause of the emotion. However, it can be and directed at the feeler himself or be aggregated into sadness or a range of other emotions.
Fear
It is a reaction to danger. It often occurs with anger, and its intensity increases with the level of danger. It can sometimes turn into anxiety. Fear is a powerful motivator for action. It appears when there is a threat to, for example, health, life, possessions, when comparing the current situation to an analogous one in the past, when recalling a difficult situation, or when witnessing an event in which someone is being harmed.
Fear can activate even in the face of thoughts or imaginings. Behaviors of a person in fear include excessive focus on threatening factors, narrowing of attention, distraction, sometimes loss of self-control.
Disgust
It is an emotion of a warning nature: It informs about health and life threats, such as poisoned or stale food, dangerous plants and animals, contagiously ill people, etc. Repulsion can activate in unpleasant, rejecting situations. We won’t list here specific examples of when it occurs, so as not to trigger a revulsion reflex in readers!
Planning communications, marketing and advertising campaigns or customer service cannot be unsupported by the emotions of the audience. Yet, as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, emotions with negative overtones are usually consistently overlooked in such activities.
Wrongly. With such an approach, we lose the rich palette of emotions (both primary and secondary) that help us evaluate the feelings, attitudes, and reactions of some target audience of our activities. And after all, these activities do not bring only positive effects and associations. After all, both positive and negative emotions can be excellent catalysts for action in marketing communications.
And – more importantly – particular negative emotions entail specific behavioral reactions from consumers, which a marketer or a public relations officer should anticipate in order to take countermeasures in advance.
These reactions are primarily:
- brand detachment,
- brand switching,
- negative PTO,
- complaints and claims.
What opportunities does emotion analysis offer in this regard?
By checking negative reactions (e.g., in social media comments, under articles, products, statements in forums, etc.), we can define and outline the space where people with certain prejudices or using negative stereotypes and heuristics will be found. Through emotion analysis, we will estimate their percentage and be able to correct our communication in the future, which will improve its effectiveness.
Using emotion analysis in text (a step further than just sentiment analysis), we can also see what kind of negative emotions our audience feels. Are they anger, fear and sadness, or rather more complex, multi-layered emotions.
Here again, let’s emphasize the superiority of emotion analysis over sentiment analysis. Consumers feeling anger, disgust, or sadness will be classified as feeling negative sentiment. However, emotion analysis will indicate that consumers feeling sadness will show a tendency to withdraw and be inactive. Meanwhile, those feeling anger will rather confront and try to remove the cause of their anger.
This is an important piece of information. After all, negative emotions can be harnessed to marketing and advertising efforts in such a case, provided, however, that the brand applying such a procedure hastens a solution that brings relief. One just has to remember not to overdo it with these negative emotions. When consumers are unsure of how the brand intends to solve their tension – they will leave.
Now let’s look at the different emotions in terms of their impact on the relationship with a particular brand or product.
Anger towards the brand and the behaviors that manifest it
Anger can be shown by consumers through indignation, irritation or resentment in varying degrees. Such a state can manifest itself when, for example, a brand strikes at the principals of its audience, when its actions are overly pushy or provocative. Anger will cause frustrated customers to become active. It is also an emotion that stimulates taking action to find a solution on one’s own to neutralize this emotion.
Customer anger is often caused by product failure or other situations where the company is clearly to blame. Customers often get angry when a product fails them or they experience other problems that are clearly the company’s fault. And even more so when it is easy to prove its responsibility for causing the defect. In this case, the reaction of consumers will be to file complaints, write grievances, etc. In addition, they will show their dissatisfaction by spreading negative opinions about the company (negative WOM). Finally, they will be eager to confront the company in the form of protests, boycotts, etc.
Interestingly, in the so-called cross, that is, the combination of felt primary emotions, anger is not infrequently accompanied by shame, for example, in the form of a sense of humiliation. A simple mechanism is at work here: the manifestation of anger will occur due to embarrassment or humiliation precisely. It is worth knowing that in such a situation, the behavioral reactions of both emotions will be very similar to each other.
Shame is also an emotion whose manifestation will occur when the consumer experiences inconvenience due to his own interaction towards a particular brand. Under such circumstances, consumer behavior may steer toward re-building a relationship with the brand, but already on a different basis. This relationship is definitely not going to occur in the manifestation of sadness, where a passive attitude will prevail.
Disgust – what it manifests itself as
This negative emotion will arise when a brand strikes at consumers’ core values, e.g., violates labor rights, uses reprehensible market practices, conducts environmental robbery, tests products on animals, etc. Consumers’ response to feeling revulsion will definitely be to switch to competing brands (brand switching). Negative WOM (word of mouth) can also often be observed. Manifestations of disgust can also be aggressive actions directed against the brand, such as organizing protests and boycotts.
Fear – how consumers who feel it react
It is associated with feelings of anxiety, a state of insecurity and insecurity. Customers feel fear when they perceive something in a brand or product that disturbs their aforementioned sense of security. This feeling, even subjective, will, over time, project negatively on the brand that the consumer feels threatens him.
Fear is absolutely a stimulant for action. Unlike anger, however, the action taken by customers is not to attack the source of frustration, but to run away from it and avoid an unpleasant confrontation. And this is what happens to brands that, in the opinion of customers, for example, pursue overly aggressive marketing policies – consumers avoid confronting them.
As a result, they develop attitudes such as reluctance to try a new product or use the company’s services in general (brand detachment). On the other hand, when they need a product with certain parameters, however, they may initiate a switch to a competing brand (brand switching).
Sadness and its manifestations in behavior
Sadness (and all its shades) is an emotion characterized by directing energy inward, into oneself (as is anger). Saddened consumers withdraw from interactions with brands and – often – from public space (including social media) in general. In consumers’ actions, sadness tends to be reflected in moving to a competing company and choosing an analogous product or service.
Sadness typically manifests itself jointly with fear because the behavioral reactions in both cases are similar. Causing withdrawal and passivity, sadness has the same effects for the brand as fear, the result of which is a flight from the relationship. Sadness, however, will not induce actions besides severing the relationship with the brand (and possibly brand switching), while fear can also initiate negative comments, filing complaints, writing complaints, denunciations, etc.
So, what is it that can consequently trigger consumer reactions toward a brand? There are several factors, such as:
- an inappropriate name or an annoying advertising slogan,
- excessive focus on one target group and preparation of advertising activities with only them in mind, resulting in the inability of others to identify with the brand,
- advertising narrative that is incompatible with reality,
- outdated, almost old-fashioned ideas for advertising campaigns,
- unpleasant impressions caused by direct contact with the point of sale or product,
- the company’s pursuit of a negatively perceived policy.
A consumer’s dissatisfaction with a brand policy most often leads to his expression of anger. The reason is usually the company’s lack of response or a response that is inappropriate from that person’s perspective. These factors cause an escalation of tension, resulting again in anger or even hatred.
Anger and dissatisfaction are commonly experienced negative emotions by customers towards a particular brand
Having a high power of affective action, these emotions cause a reaction in various forms. Therefore, from the point of view of companies, it is important to analyze one’s own actions in terms of the emotions that will be triggered in consumers. After all, by analyzing emotions, one can try to stop the angry and disgruntled from showing aggression. As a result, you can make sure they don’t file complaints and grievances, spread negative information or, finally, leave for a company that is less frustrating and offers analogous products or services.
The most common consequences of consumers’ negative emotions are that they abandon the brand in question and move on to a competitor, and spread negative information. For these people, it is much easier, less stressful and requires less effort than even filling out a complaint form and sending it to the relevant unit of the company.
In such a situation, the company has to face loss of profits, a drop in sales and a decrease in the group of customers for its products. Moreover, it basically knows nothing about the reasons for such behavior of existing customers. If only for this reason, emotion analysis with a focus on negative emotions is so recommendable.
But that’s not all. Negative emotions carry a range of information that can be used in communications, advertising and marketing. Knowing the reasons for the occurrence of such emotions in their audience, a company, or brand can correct its policy in a given area, but also take up the fight to improve its position in the market.
How? Simply diagnose the negative emotions of your product’s target audience, but in the context of competing brands. Then you can use them to:
- make consumers more permanently attached to their brand (show the flaws of the competition to your customers),
- reducing brand switching,
- targeting your competitors’ audiences more effectively.
In marketing and advertising, brands even use strategies based on constructing activities that arouse strictly negative emotions
Of course, the assumption is that as soon as they are aroused, the recipients will be provided with a feeling of relief. Examples of this are most often found in social campaigns.
by Sentimenti Team | Sep 30, 2021 | SentiBrand, Sentimenti research
Emotionality is an extremely important, yet often underestimated part of the human being today. Emotions are a direct heritage of our distant ancestors – they were created to inform us about important events, to protect us from danger, to help us make decisions, to sustain us in action, and to establish and maintain relationships with others. Emotions translate into almost every area of life and without them it is simply impossible to function.
This (perhaps somewhat emotional) introduction is an introduction to a series of articles describing the possibilities of using modern technologies and artificial intelligence to recognize emotions and – in the perspective – to predict future decisions or consumer actions.
The source of information about these emotions can be, for example, posts of the Internet users themselves, published on social networking sites, discussion forums, in the form of comments under articles and wherever there is a possibility to express one’s own opinion. The more initiated will say – this is all about sentiment analysis! And they will be right, but only partially – we will look at these issues more broadly than just through the prism of sentiment. Because emotion is definitely not the same as sentiment, although we often see the two phrases used interchangeably.
What are emotions?
Let’s start by defining emotion. It is an instinctive, spontaneous, but also complex reaction of the brain to a stimulus, both external (perceived by the senses) and internal (memories, imagination or thoughts). Emotions are one of the components necessary for the perception of reality – they participate in cognitive processes, regulate social behavior, and in a healthy person – through mirror neurons – help to understand the emotional state of another person.
Why complex? The result of such a reaction is, among other things, the secretion of hormones and the expression of emotions through the body. Such patterns of physiological reactions as acceleration of breathing, pulse and heartbeat, pain, freezing, tingling or other arousal of the body, muscle tension, nausea, in addition to characteristic facial expressions, body language, sound properties of speech (prosody), etc., may appear in the expression. As a result – after collecting and processing the data, a specific action is taken, e.g. running away, putting up a fight, expressing admiration, appreciation, etc.
In the course of research on emotionality, it has been established (e.g. by Paul Ekman and Robert Plutchik) that some of the emotions occur in people irrespective of their settlement (or upbringing) in a given cultural circle. These emotions are the so-called primary emotions, and among them are: joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise (Plutchik developing this theory additionally includes expectation and trust). Emotions can be compared here to colors: in both cases the basic components create their derivatives.
Thus, from the mixture of sadness and surprise comes disappointment, from anger and disgust – contempt, from trust and fear – submission, from surprise and anger – indignation. In a straight line – emotions are a way of expressing more complex constructs – feelings.
What is sentiment?
And how does sentiment relate to emotion? Sentiment can be defined as a peculiar mental attitude that is an aggregation of emotions and related thoughts. It is a decidedly subjective experience and develops from emotion only when we are aware of the presence of a phenomenon. Sentiment combines physiological reactions and cognitive components, and it occurs when we are already able to name the state we are in (or identify, name the emotion affecting us) and, consequently, decide to make a particular response. It will not develop unless it is preceded by the expression of an emotion.
Sentiment is, then, the result and, at the same time, the derivative of many emotions, an emotional state with a longer span of action than emotions – for it lasts as long as we are able to “cherish” its presence within us.
What is sentiment analysis?
Sentiment analysis in the context of Content Marketing is a way to measure and validate the overall impression, the mood that readers are in after reading given content. It doesn’t so much focus on the specific emotions expressed, but rather differentiates the feelings or impressions of the audience after reading the text into “positive” and “negative” (sometimes “neutral” as well) – this is reflected in the “positive” and “negative” sentiments. (sometimes also “neutral”) – this is reflected in the opinions expressed. When analysing the sentiment in the content, we collect data which, although highly simplified, gives us the possibility of quick estimation and easy processing. The analysis of the sentiment contained in the content is a method for measuring the reaction (attitude) of readers after reading, and thus the marketing value of the content itself.
How does this translate into action in practice? Thanks to the sentiment measurement it is easier for the publisher to verify particular articles – to check whether the reception of their message was positive or not; however, a problem may arise in the case of neutral, informative articles and content which will not lead to polarization of opinions when commenting on them. The data collected in this way is simply highly generalized.
Sentiment analysis provides insight into readers’ thematic preferences: it allows you to group content into those that evoke positive and negative associations. It makes it easier for publishers to plan the publication of content and allows for better (albeit not very precise) targeting of content audiences. Remember – the process of forming sentiment is long and complicated, and sentiment itself is susceptible to regulation and control by the reader’s thoughts. As a controlled reaction, it loses its natural dynamics and thus its authenticity.
Emotion analysis and the differences in the two solutions
Using the terms emotion and sentiment interchangeably is a mistake. As we have shown above, an analysis of the sentiment contained in published content is only a slice of a larger picture. A slice that describes a situation in which the reader will control his reactions and, as a result, consciously take action. So you could say that sentiment analysis is based on the logical actions of a given internet user.
Meanwhile, the analysis of emotions is essentially holistic – it focuses primarily on the primal, atavistic element, namely the instinct. Emotions appear spontaneously, they can be very intense and have a short-lasting effect, but they are also a motivator for specific actions. This is why an analysis of the emotions contained in a text, though more difficult to conduct, is in effect deeper and more accurate – it will make it possible to predict readers’ reactions, the actions they will take, or even try to identify the blockages holding them back from specific activity.
Analysing emotions allows you to gather a lot more data on the extent to which readers enjoyed, frustrated or simply found the text boring, which will then translate into more accurate planning of actions towards particular texts and predicting internet users’ reactions: sentiment will show us consumers’ attitudes towards the published content, while emotions – what’s behind these attitudes!
Example: Two reviews of a product are published. One of them says “This product did not meet my expectations,” while the other says “I hate this product with all my being.” Both descriptions will be classified as having a negative sentiment, but they will be significantly different in emotional valence – after all, there is a difference between disappointment or sadness and hatred. The analysis of emotions allows us to detect such, sometimes small, subtleties and indicate the specific types of behavior following them. It will help to guide the employees analyzing the data on what a given consumer may do after issuing such an opinion, or indicate how another consumer, whose product did not satisfy or saddened, will behave.
Let’s look at the results of testing the two sentence examples above with the Sentimenti text emotion analysis tool:
Ten produkt nie spełnił moich oczekiwań
This product did not meet my expectations | Nienawidzę tego wyrobu całym sobą
I hate this product with all my heart
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surprise / zaskoczenie - 40% | surprise / zaskoczenie - 44% |
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For comparison (study conducted with the same tool): sentiment for the first statement included in the sentence – positive – 20%, negative – 25%, emotional arousal – 46%. For the second – positive – 20%, negative – 40%, emotional arousal – 61%.
It is immediately clear that the analysis of emotions gives much more useful information. First comes anger – an obvious emotion, caused by discomfort, dissatisfaction with the purchase, but differentiated into disappointment and hatred. This anger is additionally boosted by fear, which in the second case reaches a significant intensity of 34%. Sadness is also significantly higher in the second statement.
What is not surprising is the similar level of surprise (discomfort in both cases) and anticipation (perhaps of a reaction from the brand or store below the post, or other comments similar in tone). The low level of trust is also not surprising, although it is not close to zero – probably both commenters are waiting for the mentioned reaction from the brand, and they have not experienced a similar situation from its side before. And the joy – you ask? Similar in both statements, it can mean hope for an apology or… satisfaction from expressed anger!
Another issue that makes sentiment analysis less useful is the possibility of data misinterpretation. What are we talking about? The misattribution of sentiment to emotion and the following consequences. An example from a popular fanpage of a well-known large discount retailer: “Why (angle grinder – author’s note) is not available stationary ?”
Conclusion: a consumer comments under a post in Social Media complaining that the product is not available in his local store. From the context of the comment it is clear that the sentiment contained in the comment is negative and the content itself (which can be seen even without the algorithm!) is characterized by sadness. Without analyzing the emotion, it is impossible to conclude that this sadness does not have to have a negative connotation – after all, it shows the brand’s communication tracking, indicates interest in the product and indicates a potential problem with its sale. Valuable information for analysts!
Let’s back this up with another example. We compare two comments and examine them in terms of the emotions and sentiment they contain.
I'm really regretting not being able to buy that blue cheese today that we like so much. Bardzo żałuję, że nie udało mi się dziś kupić tego sera pleśniowego, który tak bardzo lubimy. | Today I saw cheese on the shelf at the store, all moldy, something disgusting.
Dzisiaj w sklepie widziałem na półce ser, cały spleśniały, coś obrzydliwego. |
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oczekiwanie / expectation - 31% | oczekiwanie / expectation - 21% |
zaskoczenie / surprise - 44% | zaskoczenie / surprise - 56% |
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Sentiment for statement 1: positive – 20%, negative – 35%, emotional arousal – 54%.
Sentiment for statement 2: positive – 4%, negative – 72%, emotional arousal – 64%.
Conclusions. In both cases, sentiment is rated as negative. But if we go into a deeper study (emotion analysis), we see that: confidence level is 2.5 times (250%) higher in statement 1 than in statement 2, joy is 5 times (500%) higher in statement 1, while anger is almost twice (84%) higher in statement 2, sadness is 46% higher in statement 2, and expectation (for something positive) is 47% lower in text 2.
Anger at an intensity of 70% is obvious for the second statement, as are the high scores for surprise, sadness, and disgust. Well, few people would be happy to see such a find in a store (joy 4% and trust 9% speak for themselves here). Analytically, however, statement 1 is much more interesting. What do we learn about the consumer who utters such a message?
We are struck by the high intensity of sadness and surprise, as it describes the state of the customer who has realized that he cannot fulfill his need. On top of that, there is a background of fear, probably caused by the fear of not having the favorite cheese in the future. The fear of shortages is accompanied by anticipation (will they deliver, won’t they?). Joy, on the other hand, is reflected in the fact of liking a certain kind of cheese, which is why it appears in the analysis in double digits.
Finally, we suggest looking at the table where we compare sentiment with specific emotions:
POLARYZACJA SENTYMENTU
POLARIZATION / SENTIMENT | |
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OCZEKIWANIE / EXPECTATIONS
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As you can see, assigning emotions from Plutchik’s model to only two types of sentiment can present difficulties when analyzing the data.
A few words of summary
“The pen is mightier than the sword”. – These were the words of Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his play “Richelieu”, and he was not wrong: words carry much more power than unreflective violence. No wonder scientists wanted to find out what lies behind words. What makes them appear at all and acquire some concrete meaning.
The first serious attempts to study sentiment began in the early 20th century, and had to do with studies of the polarization of public opinion. By the 1990s, there was already research into the subjectivity of textual content using computers, but the real explosion of research didn’t come until after 2004 – the year Google indexed 6 billion items, and Facebook debuted. There was research leading to the development of tools that could analyze sentiment. Who would have thought – almost 20 years have passed since then….
Today, content analytics technology has reached a new level: there is a shift away from simple, zero-one ratings of content to deeper analysis – emotion analysis. As a result, the scope of application of AI-based tools continues to grow. Today they can not only assess the mood of the consumer after a visit to the store; in this article we have used such examples because it is easy to show the principle of operation of analytical tools.
Tools for the analysis of emotions are already used in determining the behavior of investors on the stock exchange, prediction of stock prices or cryptocurrencies, they help in widely understood marketing activities, public relations (media monitoring) or customer service (e.g. analysis of communication with the chat-bot). There will be more and more applications, just as the technology itself will develop. Is it worth getting interested in? Definitely yes!
by Sentimenti Team | Aug 23, 2021 | SentiBrand
Getting to know consumer habits and understanding customer motivations is a good way to increase sales and grow your business. These goals can be achieved by analyzing emotions in the publications of Internet users, especially those related to your own brand. In this article we talk about the study of emotions in marketing and their impact on consumer behavior.
Emotions in marketing – are they worth exploring?
Emotions are responsible for certain body reactions and influence a person’s behavior. When analyzing emotions online, we use Robert Plutchik’s model, which distinguishes 8 basic emotions: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, trust, surprise and anticipation. In expression, anger can lead to confrontation or aggression, joy enhances creativity and decision-making.
Sadness speaks of lack and manifests withdrawal, disgust rejects and stimulates flight, and fear also causes the urge to flee or attack. Trust speaks of closeness and relationship quality, surprise is an inducer of other emotions and feelings, and anticipation stimulates the body, preparing it for an upcoming event.
Since emotions are responsible for instinctive reactions, knowing their intensity can help predict consumer behaviour, improve customer service or monitor the brand image more effectively online. Knowing what evokes positive associations in customers, one can shape advertising, marketing and PR policy. Emotions are useful in creating characteristics of customers (persona) or for storytelling.
Researching customer emotions – advantages
Examining emotions in your own customers gives your company insight into consumer behavior. It will be useful e.g. when validating the effects of an advertising or communication campaign or in Content Marketing. It will help in creating tailored messages and more precise targeting of groups, more effective collection of leads, implementation of display campaigns, etc.
By examining the emotions of the recipients, the company may monitor its image and react in advance to the symptoms of crisis.
Emotion analysis versus sentiment analysis – the differences
The two terms are not used interchangeably; this is a mistake. Emotion analysis is the study of basic emotions – the unconscious, instinctual reactions of the brain and body to external or internal stimuli (e.g., thoughts, memories) and their effect on a person’s behavior. Meanwhile, sentiment analysis refers to reactions that are thought out and controlled by the subject: after becoming aware of the action of an emotion, he or she makes a decision that results in a mental attitude – sentiment.
Its study gives a result in the form of positive and negative sentiment, but we get an overall negative result without indicating the specific emotion and the behavior following it. With emotion analysis, we get the percentage score of each of the 8 emotions in the utterance, plus the sentiment analysis and the emotional arousal index.
They can check their own and their competitors’ emotionally charged phrases to determine how customers feel about their products or services, compare them with those of their competitors, and then make changes – to their offerings, their communication, or just their image.
Negative emotions: what can trigger them in marketing?
Negative emotions are conventionally called emotions whose perception is perceived as unpleasant. This perception gives the whole group of emotions a pejorative name, but the emotions themselves are warning signals of danger and are therefore not negative. In marketing or advertising emotions with such overtones may appear as a result of specific actions of brands or companies. What causes negative reactions of consumers?
For example, the use of the message, which strikes at the key values of the recipients of communication, breaks stereotypes, refers to unpopular views. Such slip-ups are the domain of multinationals that cannot predict the effects of actions in culturally distinct societies and do not take into account the mood of the target group. Another example is misalignment of the message with the requirements of the target group: it indicates misunderstanding of the group’s needs and will cause its frustration, which will translate into poor sales results and unfavorable comments on the Internet – and thus a scratch on the company/brand image.
Actions that cause negative emotions can also include overly intrusive PR and advertising, provocative actions (e.g. viral marketing), reprehensible practices towards employees, destruction of the environment, laboratory testing on animals, etc.
Negative customer emotions and their consequences
Customers most often talk about negative emotions through the company’s communication channels – social media, portals, e-mail. They comment under posts or create them themselves, review products and services, write opinions on forums, under articles, etc.
If the company’s message evokes negative emotions in them and these persist, their consequences will include negative WOMM (spreading unfavourable comments and opinions), brand switching (moving to the competition), brand detachment (severing relations with the brand), filing complaints, and even consumer boycotts, organizing protests or taking legal action.
How should a company respond to the negative emotions of its customers?
Negative emotions in your customers cannot be avoided, but you can minimize their effects. That’s why you should choose the analysis of emotions contained in the content. In social listening it will give you an up-to-date insight into the moods of your customers, in brand monitoring – the perception of the brand, it will also help to predict the behavior of consumers. And what to do when the symptoms of crisis appear? First of all, do not ignore them.
Negative moods will not subside on their own. Then accept the criticism and analyze the customer’s point of view – it is possible that the company’s policy was based on wrong assumptions. Finally – take concrete corrective actions, e.g. dialogue with the client, validation of communication or marketing activities, or improvement of the controversial service or product.
Interpretation of results:
The customer felt strongly surprised (62%) by the controversial statement of the maintenance department. She is angry about this (52%), but also feels anger about the careless finish of the apartment she bought.
The high level of surprise also relates to the individual faults that the customer mentions in her comment: the wrong way to suspend the ceiling, the faulty damp insulation around the chimney, the unprotected attic, the lack of a well-functioning but legally executed ventilation of the room with the fireplace or stove, the deficiencies in the electrical system and their repair that does not comply with building regulations, and finally the excessively high prices of additional services.
This state of affairs makes the customer feel sad (48%) and at the same time disgusted (loathing – 40%). The commentator does not know what else will happen to her in connection with the purchase (expectation – 35%), is afraid that things will not turn out well (fear – 36%), but still has hope for a positive outcome (expectation – 35%, trust – 21%). Finally, there is the indicator of joy (22%).
In the present case, it refers to ironic comments towards the developer, who is satisfied with his actions. We also have results for sentiment and emotional agitation – positive – 21%, negative – 45%, emotional agitation – 67%. This last element indicates that the commenter is highly agitated and inclined to take action.
What actions from such a client should be expected? Her emotional state, accompanying negative sentiment, and high arousal rate will likely push the commenter to post negative comments (negative WOMM) on forums, social media, and anywhere else she sees requests for feedback about this particular developer. In all likelihood, she will advertise any faults that arise with the developer, and possibly – pursue legal action.
Author: Igor Starczak. The publication also appeared in the quarterly “Developer & Marketing” (No. 3 / 2021).
by Sentimenti Team | Aug 5, 2021 | Conferences, Market research, Scientific publications
Place of publication:
- Conference: Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and the 11th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing
Title:
Personal Bias in Prediction of Emotions Elicited by Textual Opinions
Authors:
Jan Kocoń, Piotr Miłkowski, Damian Grimling, Marcin Gruza, Kamil Kanclerz, Przemysław Kazienko
Abstract:
Analysis of emotions elicited by opinions, comments, or articles commonly exploits annotated corpora, in which the labels assigned to documents average the views of all annotators, or represent a majority decision. The models trained on such data are effective at identifying the general views of the population. However, their usefulness for predicting the emotions evoked by the textual content in a particular individual is limited. In this paper, we present a study performed on a dataset containing 7,000 opinions, each annotated by about 50 people with two dimensions: valence, arousal, and with intensity of eight emotions from Plutchik’s model. Our study showed that individual responses often significantly differed from the mean. Therefore, we proposed a novel measure to estimate this effect – Personal Emotional Bias (PEB). We also developed a new BERT-based transformer architecture to predict emotions from an individual human perspective. We found PEB a major factor for improving the quality of personalized reasoning. Both the method and measure may boost the quality of content recommendation systems and personalized solutions that protect users from hate speech or unwanted content, which are highly subjective in nature.
Link: ResearchGate
by Damian Grimling | Aug 5, 2021 | Politics and Social
This is undoubtedly one of the most commented political topics of recent weeks. Lex TVN. What it is. It’s a parliamentary draft of amendments to the media law, the proceedings of which coincided with the expiration of the license to broadcast the TVN24 television station. Is the topic heating up citizens online? If so, how much?
Lex TVN. What is it about and how do Internet users react?
- The TVN24 station, according to the new law, may not get its 10-year broadcasting license renewed,
- The topic has been one of the most popular in recent weeks and has been strongly agitating Internet users,
- Emotions are rising as soon as one remembers that the whole issue is being watched personally by US President Joe Biden.The topic of the concession to the TVN24 station stirs emotions, as evidenced by the high emotion arousal of Internet users. We examined the discussion of the so-called Lex TVN across the web (not only social media, but also comments under editorials and on forums and blogs and elsewhere). This is a total of almost 180,000 opinions of Internet users. The chart below illustrates the number of statements on the subject online and the average daily intensity of emotional arousal. The values of this indicator for the entire analyzed period, i.e. from July 8 to August 2 this year, were higher than 50%.
The topic of the TVN24 station’s concession stirs emotions, as evidenced by the high emotional arousal of Internet users. We examined the discussion of the so-called Lex TVN across the web (not only social media, but also comments under editorials and on forums and blogs and elsewhere). This is a total of almost 180,000 opinions of Internet users. The chart below illustrates the number of statements on the subject online and the average daily intensity of emotional arousal.
Contexts of negative discussion on Lex TVN
As is standard with the topic of media repolonization, the key contexts for negative discussion are: free media, freedom of speech, independent media. A lot of discussion was devoted to foreign capital in the media (here, too, the context is about private business, the civilized world, the owner of TVN). However, the citizen’s right to access the media and to reliable information was pointed out. As standard, criticism went in the direction of the ruling party, the public media were slashed (context: propaganda tube, brainwashing, dark people). Also standard in this type of discussion is extensive reference to other current policy issues. This is another typical clash of tribes in the digital world.
In terms of discussion venues, we recorded the most anger on news portals, i.e. in conversations among Internet users under editorials (level of almost 40%). The most joy, on the other hand, appeared on Facebook. There, many posts and content were published under which people cheered the opposition in taking action to defend their favorite TV station.
In general, however, the dominance of negative emotion is noticeable in all media, although the level of emotion saturation = 50% was not exceeded in any of the sources.
Conclusions
In 2020. Poland has dropped as many as 11 positions on the list of the strongest national brands (Soft Power Index). It seems that Lex TVN is another unnecessary and potentially dangerous image crisis for the country. Such events have a direct impact not only on polarizing citizens and fueling further conflicts. They cause more tangible losses – declines in the rankings of the strongest brands-countries (e.g., Country Index, in which Poland fell 11 notches to position 55 in 2020). The situation around Lex TVN – even if it’s just a holiday substitute topic – could scare off potential investors and damage our foreign policy.
From the point of view of surveys of conversations among Internet users, this is another topic in a whole sea of political topics to stir up the electorate online. It can also be a completely surrogate issue, thrown in by politicians for the vacation season to stoke extreme emotion. There is also no denying that the topic has somewhat run out of steam in recent days.
The defense, according to the opposition, of the so-called “free media” does not break through as strongly in the online world. The issue can also be considered on another level. The ruling party has a plan to win the next election. It can do this with TVN24 (it has succeeded many times), but it may not succeed in the absence of Internet control. Perhaps the next installment of the battle for control in the media will be in this space. The station, which is the subject of Lex TVN, will become a forbidden fruit once the new law is passed. This means that its popularity – contrary to the assumptions of the new law – is likely to soar.
