The role of emotional branding in building brand personality from a consumer perspective

The purpose of this exploratory research is to study the role of emotional branding in building brand personality. The research is conducted from the perspective of the consumer, more specifically the Finnish Generation Y females. The aim of the thesis is to gain insights and understanding on the key concepts and contribute to the Generation Y literature. In addition, the research examines the effect of certain cultural implications on the process of building brand personality. The research was conducted as an embedded single-case study, in which qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with a sample of six consumers and personal observation within one of the concept stores of the case company. In order to triangulate the data, secondary sources were utilized to gain more information about the case company. The results indicated a connection between emotional branding and the formulation of brand personality, which can be manipulated according to the brand personality drivers. Congruence with consumer self-conceptualization and set of values were discovered to strengthen the emotional bonding. As the end result, the research was able to clarify the process-thinking behind emotional branding.

User-generated experiences: how automated platforms for content creation and sharing has transformed information access

Esitys KDK-käytettävyystyöryhmän järjestämässä seminaarissa: Miten käyttäjien toiveet haastavat metatietokäytäntöjämme? / How users' expectations challenge our metadata practices? 30.9.2014.

Effects of emotional reactivity on inhibitory avoidance in the elevated T-maze

The possibility of the presence of inter-individual emotional differences and the memory performance of rats was examined in the elevated T-maze. Two kinds of aversively motivated behaviors, inhibitory avoidance and escape learning, were measured. Based on the number of trials to achieve a learning criterion, rats were divided into two subgroups with either low or high avoidance reactivity (LAR or HAR, respectively). Retention test avoidance latencies showed that HAR animals had better avoidance memory (Mann-Whitney rank sum test, P = 0.0035). No such differences were found for the escape component of this test. These data suggest that individual emotional differences affect inhibitory avoidance performance, which may help to explain the dispersion of the data observed in other studies using this paradigm.

Functional, Social and Emotional Values as Determinants of Environmentally Responsible Media Consumption

The primary purpose of this research is to develop an enhanced understanding of how consumption values influence environmentally responsible consumption of print and digital media. Theoretical elaboration considers the associations of functional, social and emotional consumption values, green consumer segmentation and media consumption. Additionally, the purpose is to identify consumer perceptions of print and digital media’s environmental responsibility. Empirical analysis was based on qualitative interviews with a sample of 20 Finnish consumers categorized in two segments: young adults and middle aged consumers. Primary data collection was conducted through individual, semi-structured interviews. To analyze the respondents’ approach on the topic, the interviews disclosed themes of media consumption, perceived environmental friendliness of media, norms of behavior and consumers’ general consumption patterns. The results implicate functional value dominated the consumption decision-making process both in a general level and in media consumption. In addition to functional value, environmental responsibility does provide consumers with both emotional and social values. Analysis on perceived environmental responsibility of media demonstrated consumers generally perceive digital media as an environmentally responsible alternative because it does not create physical paper waste. Nevertheless, the perceptions of environmental responsibility and media consumption patterns lacked a consistent connection. Though, both theory and empirical results indicated an average consumer lacks a comprehensive understanding of digital and print media’s life-cycle and hence their environmental advantages and disadvantages.

Experiences among primary school teachers in Tanzania

The overall aim of the study was to explore primary school teachers’ experiences of constraints to their work, and actions taken for improvement after undergoing in-service courses in the Education Quality Improvement through Pedagogy program. The research interest was thus to deepen the understanding of teachers’ experiences of constraints to their work and experiences of actions taken to improve classroom actions. In order to achieve this ambition, the study was conducted with primary school teachers in Shinyanga district-Tanzania. Two research questions guided the study: What do teachers experience as constraints to their work? The second: How have teachers improved their classroom actions after undergoing professional development courses? The theoretical framework of the study is centred on limiting and enabling frames on teachers’ work and professional development. In order to understand the classroom situations, qualitative research was designed applying a phenomenological approach with semi-structured interview, observation and videotaping to collect data. Forty experienced primary school teachers from ten primary schools participated in the study. The results of the first research question indicate that teachers face many constraints in their work. Three categories identified as interactional, environmental and professional role constraints. The most critical experienced by all teachers is teaching in large classes and inadequate teaching and learning materials. The results of the second research question show that teachers’ actions taken for improving their work were influenced by professional development activities. Three main categories including expanded interaction, expanded use of environment and expanded professional roles were identified. Generally, the knowledge generated is relevant for viewing teachers’ experiences of the challenges they encounter in teaching and the importance of professional development beyond the sampled respondents. The results suggest that constant provision of teachers’ professional development could improve teaching performance.

Enhancement of declarative memory associated with emotional content in a Brazilian sample

Several studies have documented that emotional arousal may enhance long-term memory. This is an adaptation of a paradigm previously used in North American and European samples in investigations of the influence of emotion on long-term retention. A sample of 46 healthy adults of high and low educational levels watched a slide presentation of stories. A randomly assigned group watched a story with an arousing content and another group watched a neutral story. The stories were matched for structure and comprehensibility and the set and order of the 11 slides were the same in both conditions. Immediately after viewing the slide presentation, the participants were asked to rate the emotionality of the narrative. The arousing narrative was rated as being more emotional than the neutral narrative (t (44) = -3.6, P<0.001). Ten days later subjects were asked to remember the story and answer a multiple-choice questionnaire about it. The subjects who watched the arousing story had higher scores in the free recall measure (t (44) = -2.59, P<0.01). There were no differences between groups in the multiple-choice test of recognition memory (t (44) = 0.26). These findings confirm that an emotional arousing content enhances long-term declarative memory and indicate the possibility of applying this instrument to clinical samples of various cultural backgrounds.

Social Solidarity and Fear of Crime - Community and Individual Approaches in Responses to Mass Violence after School Shootings

The aim of this study was to examine community and individual approaches in responses to mass violence after the school shooting incidents in Jokela (November 2007) and Kauhajoki (September 2008), Finland. In considering the community approach, responses to any shocking criminal event may have integrative, as well as disintegrative effects, within the neighborhood. The integration perspective argues that a heinous criminal event within one’s community is a matter of offence to collectively held feelings and beliefs, and increases perceived solidarity; whereas the disintegration perspective suggests that a criminal event weakens the social fabric of community life by increasing fear of crime and mistrust among locals. In considering the individual approach, socio-demographic factors, such as one’s gender, are typically significant indicators, which explain variation in fear of crime. Beyond this, people are not equally exposed to violent crime and therefore prior victimization and event related experiences may further explain why people differ in their sensitivity to risk from mass violence. Finally, factors related to subjective mental health, such as depressed mood, are also likely to moderate individual differences in responses to mass violence. This study is based on the correlational design of four independent cross-sectional postal surveys. The sampling frames (N=700) for the surveys were the Finnish speaking adult population aged 18–74-years. The first mail survey in Jokela (n=330) was conducted between May and June 2008, approximately six months from the shooting incident at the local high-school. The second Jokela survey (n=278) was conducted in May–June of 2009, 18 months removed from the incident. The first survey in Kauhajoki (n=319) was collected six months after the incident at the local University of Applied Sciences, March– April 2009, and the second (n=339) in March–April 2010, approximately 18 months after the event. Linear and ordinal regression and path analysis are used as methods of analyses. The school shootings in Jokela and Kauhajoki were extremely disturbing events, which deeply affected the communities involved. However, based on the results collected, community responses to mass violence between the two localities were different. An increase in social solidarity appears to apply in the case of the Jokela community, but not in the case of the Kauhajoki community. Thus a criminal event does not necessarily impact the wider community. Every empirical finding is most likely related to different contextual and event-specific factors. Beyond this, community responses to mass violence in Jokela also indicated that the incident was related to a more general sense of insecurity and was also associating with perceived community deterioration and further suggests that responses to mass violence may have both integrating and disintegrating effects. Moreover, community responses to mass violence should also be examined in relation to broader social anxieties and as a proxy for generalized insecurity. Community response is an emotive process and incident related feelings are perhaps projected onto other identifiable concerns. However, this may open the door for social errors and, despite integrative effects, this may also have negative consequences within the neighborhood. The individual approach suggests that women are more fearful than men when a threat refers to violent crime. Young women (aged 18–34) were the most worried age and gender group as concerns perception of threat from mass violence at schools compared to young men (aged 18–34), who were also the least worried age and gender group when compared to older men. It was also found that concerns about mass violence were stronger among respondents with the lowest level of monthly household income compared to financially better-off respondents. Perhaps more importantly, responses to mass violence were affected by the emotional proximity to the event; and worry about the recurrence of school shootings was stronger among respondents who either were a parent of a school-aged child, or knew a victim. Finally, results indicate that psychological wellbeing is an important individual level factor. Respondents who expressed depressed mood consistently expressed their concerns about mass violence and community deterioration. Systematic assessments of the impact of school shooting events on communities are therefore needed. This requires the consolidation of community and individual approaches. Comparative study designs would further benefit from international collaboration across disciplines. Extreme school violence has also become a national concern and deeper understanding of crime related anxieties in contemporary Finland also requires community-based surveys.

Store experiences and their influence on store performance and brand strength: Case Samsung Experience Store

Experiential marketing is increasingly seen as a new magical key to consumers’ hearts. Brands are turning brick-and-mortar stores into state of the art retail spaces where memorable experiences and strong brand relationships are hoped to be born. Around the globe, several brands have opened up a special format of stores – the experience store. Although many speculations on the positive effects of experiences have been presented, few studies have provided empirical, quantified evidence for the link between store experiences and brand success. In consequence, research was needed to find out whether experience stores truly are so special. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate whether store experiences are capable of building brands and influencing store performance. For this purpose, empirical research was conducted in the Samsung Experience Store Helsinki. As main constructs of the study, store experience, brand equity, store performance, and product class involvement were measured, along with relevant background variables. Data was collected with an electronic survey from actual customers of the store, resulting in a sample of 131 respondents. Partial least squares structural equations modeling (PLS) was used for the analysis of the research model. Also, regression analysis was conducted to account for mediation and moderation effects. The results showed that store experiences do positively influence first, store performance, and second, separate dimensions of brand equity (that is, brand awareness, brand personality, and brand loyalty). Also, the effect of store experiences on store performance was found to be mediated by brand equity. Interestingly, customers’ product class involvement was detected to moderate the effect of store experience on store performance. That is, those who were highly involved with electronics had greater store experiences, and also displayed a stronger linkage between store experience and store performance. The results encourage marketers to continue with efforts to create great experiences for their customers. Experience stores can – and should be seen – as both powerful brand building tools and profitable sales channels. The creation of exceptional experiences can act as an important function of physical stores in the face of severe online competition.

Engagement of multifocal neural circuits during recall of autobiographical happy events

Happy emotional states have not been extensively explored in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies using autobiographic recall paradigms. We investigated the brain circuitry engaged during induction of happiness by standardized script-driven autobiographical recall in 11 healthy subjects (6 males), aged 32.4 ± 7.2 years, without physical or psychiatric disorders, selected according to their ability to vividly recall personal experiences. Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) changes were recorded during auditory presentation of personal scripts of happiness, neutral content and negative emotional content (irritability). The same uniform structure was used for the cueing narratives of both emotionally salient and neutral conditions, in order to decrease the variability of findings. In the happiness relative to the neutral condition, there was an increased BOLD signal in the left dorsal prefrontal cortex and anterior insula, thalamus bilaterally, left hypothalamus, left anterior cingulate gyrus, and midportions of the left middle temporal gyrus (P < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparisons). Relative to the irritability condition, the happiness condition showed increased activity in the left insula, thalamus and hypothalamus, and in anterior and midportions of the inferior and middle temporal gyri bilaterally (P < 0.05, corrected), varying in size between 13 and 64 voxels. Findings of happiness-related increased activity in prefrontal and subcortical regions extend the results of previous functional imaging studies of autobiographical recall. The BOLD signal changes identified reflect general aspects of emotional processing, emotional control, and the processing of sensory and bodily signals associated with internally generated feelings of happiness. These results reinforce the notion that happiness induction engages a wide network of brain regions.

Effect of escitalopram on the processing of emotional faces

Serotonin has been implicated in the neurobiology of depressive and anxiety disorders, but little is known about its role in the modulation of basic emotional processing. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, escitalopram, on the perception of facial emotional expressions. Twelve healthy male volunteers completed two experimental sessions each, in a randomized, balanced order, double-blind design. A single oral dose of escitalopram (10 mg) or placebo was administered 3 h before the task. Participants were presented to a task composed of six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise) that were morphed between neutral and each standard emotion in 10% steps. Escitalopram facilitated the recognition of sadness and inhibited the recognition of happiness in male, but not female faces. No drug effect on subjective measures was detected. These results confirm that serotonin modulates the recognition of emotional faces, and suggest that the gender of the face can have a role in this modulation. Further studies including female volunteers are needed.

The influence of stress on fear memory processes

It is well recognized that stressful experiences promote robust emotional memories, which are well remembered. The amygdaloid complex, principally the basolateral complex (BLA), plays a pivotal role in fear memory and in the modulation of stress-induced emotional responses. A large number of reports have revealed that GABAergic interneurons provide a powerful inhibitory control of the activity of projecting glutamatergic neurons in the BLA. Indeed, a reduced GABAergic control in the BLA is essential for the stress-induced influence on the emergence of associative fear memory and on the generation of long-term potentiation (LTP) in BLA neurons. The extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) subfamily of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway in the BLA plays a central role in the consolidation process and synaptic plasticity. In support of the view that stress facilitates long-term fear memory, stressed animals exhibited a phospho-ERK2 (pERK2) increase in the BLA, suggesting the involvement of this mechanism in the promoting influence of threatening stimuli on the consolidation fear memory. Moreover, the occurrence of reactivation-induced lability is prevented when fear memory is encoded under intense stressful conditions since the memory trace remains immune to disruption after recall in previously stressed animals. Thus, the underlying mechanism in retrieval-induced instability seems not to be functional in memories formed under stress. All these findings are indicative that stress influences both the consolidation and reconsolidation fear memory processes. Thus, it seems reasonable to propose that the emotional state generated by an environmental challenge critically modulates the formation and maintenance of long-term fear memory.

H1 but not H2 histamine antagonist receptors mediate anxiety-related behaviors and emotional memory deficit in mice subjected to elevated plus-maze testing

This study investigated the role of H1 and H2 receptors in anxiety and the retrieval of emotional memory using a Trial 1/Trial 2 (T1/T2) protocol in an elevated plus-maze (EPM). Tests were performed on 2 consecutive days, designated T1 and T2. Before T1, the mice received intraperitoneal injections of saline (SAL), 20 mg/kg zolantidine (ZOL, an H2receptor antagonist), or 8.0 or 16 mg/kg chlorpheniramine (CPA, an H1 receptor antagonist). After 40 min, they were subjected to the EPM test. In T2 (24 h later), each group was subdivided into two additional groups, and the animals from each group were re-injected with SAL or one of the drugs. In T1, the Student t-test showed no difference between the SAL and ZOL or 8 mg/kg CPA groups with respect to the percentages of open arm entries (%OAE) and open arm time (%OAT). However, administration of CPA at the highest dose of 16 mg/kg decreased %OAE and %OAT, but not locomotor activity, indicating anxiogenic-like behavior. Emotional memory, as revealed by a reduction in open arm exploration between the two trials, was observed in all experimental groups, indicating that ZOL and 8 mg/kg CPA did not affect emotional memory, whereas CPA at the highest dose affected acquisition and consolidation, but not retrieval of memory. Taken together, these results suggest that H1 receptor, but not H2, is implicated in anxiety-like behavior and in emotional memory acquisition and consolidation deficits in mice subjected to EPM testing.

Effect of histamine H1 and H2 receptor antagonists, microinjected into cerebellar vermis, on emotional memory consolidation in mice

This study investigated the effects of histamine H1 or H2 receptor antagonists on emotional memory consolidation in mice submitted to the elevated plus maze (EPM). The cerebellar vermis of male mice (Swiss albino) was implanted using a cannula guide. Three days after recovery, behavioral tests were performed in the EPM on 2 consecutive days (T1 and T2). Immediately after exposure to the EPM (T1), animals received a microinjection of saline (SAL) or the H1 antagonist chlorpheniramine (CPA; 0.016, 0.052, or 0.16 nmol/0.1 µL) in Experiment 1, and SAL or the H2 antagonist ranitidine (RA; 0.57, 2.85, or 5.7 nmol/0.1 µL) in Experiment 2. Twenty-four hours later, mice were reexposed to the EPM (T2) under the same experimental conditions but they did not receive any injection. Data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and the Duncan test. In Experiment 1, mice microinjected with SAL and with CPA entered the open arms less often (%OAE) and spent less time in the open arms (%OAT) in T2, and there was no difference among groups. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that the values of %OAE and %OAT in T2 were lower compared to T1 for the groups that were microinjected with SAL and 2.85 nmol/0.1 µL RA. However, when animals were microinjected with 5.7 nmol/0.1 µL RA, they did not show a reduction in %OAE and %OAT. These results demonstrate that CPA did not affect behavior at the doses used in this study, while 5.7 nmol/0.1 µL RA induced impairment of memory consolidation in the EPM.

Creating better customer experiences: Service Design effects on customer experience

Pro gradu –tutkielman tavoitteena oli tutkia, kuinka palvelumuotoilua voidaan käyttää parempien asiakaskokemusten luomisessa. Tutkimuksen teoreettisessa osuudessa keskityttiin tutkimaan palvelumuotoilun ja asiakaskokemuksen käsitteitä. Tutkielman empiirinen osuus tehtiin laadullisena tutkimuksena, jossa vertailtiin asiakaskokemuksia kahdessa Espoon kaupungin yhteispalvelupisteessä: Leppävaarassa sijaitseva yhteispalvelupiste oli hiljattain suunniteltu uudelleen käyttäen palvelumuotoilun periaatteita; Matinkylän palvelupiste oli alkuperäisessä muodossaan tutkimuksen aikana. Tutkimuksen yhtenä tavoitteena oli myös selvittää, oliko palvelumuotoilun menetelmin tehty muotoiluprojekti Leppävaaran yhteispalvelupisteessä onnistunut, kun sitä arvioitiin asiakaskokemuksen näkökulmasta. Tutkielman aineisto kerättiin suoran havainnoinnin ja haastattelun keinoin. Yhteensä 33 yksittäistä asiakasta havannoitiin ja haastateltiin tutkimusta varten toukokuussa 2015. Vastaajat valikoituivat satunnaisesti havannointipäivien asiakkaista. Heitä havainnoitiin koko asiakaspolun ajan minkä jälkeen heitä haastateltiin. Tutkimuksen tulokset ovat kaksiosaiset. 1) Arvioitaessa asiakkaiden kokemuksia liittyen palvelutilan toimivuuteen ja aineelliseen ympäristöön todettiin, että palvelumuotoilulla saavuttettiin parempi asiakaskokemus, ja täten Leppävaaran muotoiluprojekti oli onnistunut tavoitteissaan. 2) Kun taas tuloksia tarkasteltiin asiakaspalvelutilanteiden näkökulmasta, projekti ei ollut päässyt tavoitteisiin ja palvelumuotoilun menetelmillä ei pystytty parantamaan asiakaskokemuksta. Espoon kaupungin muotoiluprojekti on vielä kesken, tulosten perusteella tutkija ehdotti jatkotoimenpiteenä muun muassa lisäkoulutusta palveluhenkilökunnalle.