Abstract
Abstract
The emergence of new technologies has revolutionized the way companies interact and build relationships with customers. This study aims to understand the emotion behind the company strategy and how they can be used to inform the design of digital channel engagements.
A content analysis of 100 international companies from a range of industries and sectors was conducted with multiple data sources to develop an emotional coding scheme, for clarifying and refining the meaning behind a company’s strategy and its relationship to corresponding digital channels.
This study identifies 10 distinct emotional channel typologies across 16 sectors through the analysed companies.
This research contributes a theoretical and empirical understanding of emotion as a strategy. Outcomes guide practitioners on the selection and design of digital engagements based on the emotion code of their strategy as well as an industry sector.
This article provides a novel approach to understanding and designing digital channel engagements by starting with meaning and purpose of the company.
Introduction
With the growing number of products and service offerings companies are faced with the challenge of unifying their value across multiple channels in a way that is consistent with their business strategy (Campbell & Yeung, 1991; Keller & Lehmann, 2003; Verhoef et al., 2009). A company’s strategy is more than a signal of quality but a way to communicate intangibles such as passion and excitement. However, current research has largely failed to capture the use of emotions for business strategy. Research on digital channels as distribution modes (Rosenbloom, 2013), the emotional aspects of customer choices in online environments (Brodie, Ilic, Juric & Hollebeek, 2013; Dholakia, Zhao & Dholakia, 2005; Rajamma, Paswan & Ganesh, 2007) and on the role of emotional intelligence in organizational management (Fineman, 2004), very little is known on the emotional aspects of company strategy to inform digital channel strategy. Therefore, the aims of this article are i) to understand the emotion behind the company strategy and ii) how they can be used to inform the design of digital channel engagements.
A content analysis of 100 companies from 16 industries has been conducted to identify emotions behind business strategy and questions their value and meaning in a dynamic online environment to understand how it can be used to design digital channel engagements. The outcomes of this research provide a bridge between two independent bodies of research by conceptually integrating company strategy and customer needs to indicate appropriate digital channel typology. The results of this study have implications for both theories by establishing an emotional coding scheme and to practice, with the development of the digital channel selection model.
Building Digital Connections
Creating honest relationships between the company and customer is now paramount to sustained business success (Hill, 2010). However, as we move into the digital age, the way in which customers are engaged has changed. The Internet has revolutionized this interaction, no longer are customers simply just downloading or searching for static data, but they are engaging, uploading and sharing their content via social networks. Digital channels have enabled customers to interact with each other and readily voice their concerns, reporting issues such as product quality, lack of availability, poor service and high prices (Numes & Cespedes, 2003). Digital channels have been defined as technology-based platforms that use the Internet to (a) connect with customers via digital technology, (b) provide a range of different content and purposes and (c) communicate in a simplex or duplex way with a range of different interaction levels (Garrett, Straker & Wrigley, 2017; Straker, Wrigley & Rosemann, 2015). The term digital ‘touchpoints’ describes the individual digital channel (e.g., website), while the term ‘digital channels’ is used to describe a group of touchpoints (e.g., website, podcast, mobile application). The exponential growth of data availability and the growing capabilities of digital technologies have also provided companies with valuable information to make tactical decisions (Dumas, 2012).
A customer’s constant engagement with technology and access to information influences their expectations from companies. Fisk (2005, p. 26) explains that customers are better informed than ever before, resulting in ‘expectations to be high and loyalty to be rare’. Campbell and Yeung (1991, p.17) discuss the emotional bond of mission statements, ‘a sense of mission is an emotional commitment felt by people towards the company’s mission’. They discuss this in regard to the employees of the company and their beliefs in the sense of purpose; however, this could also be expanded to customers, as they continue to say ‘a meaning of the mission occurs, when there is a match between the values of an organization and those of an individual’ (Campbell & Yeung, 1991, p.17). Highlighting that the matching of values is the most important part of a sense of mission as it is through values that individuals feel connected to an organization, as ‘value gives meaning’ (Campbell & Yeung, 1991, p.17). They explain that emotional commitment develops when the customer identifies with the values and behaviours behind the company strategy to understand the mission.
Many people confuse a company’s mission statement or vision statement with its value proposition. The key difference is that value propositions are created from the customer’s perspective rather than the company’s. A mission statement often defines ‘what’ a company is and does, in contrast to a value proposition that should describe the ‘why’ (Mahajan, 2016). An organization’s value proposition informs employees and investors of what the organization’s core purpose is, as well as describing desired goals (Mahajan, 2016; Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010). The value proposition concept was created by Lanning (1998), where ‘the value of a value proposition is in the customer's experience, not the value in the product. It is the experience of the customer that must be differentiated’. A value proposition or mission statement that can clearly convey organizational beliefs and goals can influence how stakeholders perceive the organization. Emotions and values both play important roles in this delivery and if stakeholders can align their values with that of an organization, customer loyalty and employee motivation are dramatically improved (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010; Williams, 2016). However, firms have difficulty providing the same clarity on the emotional aspects of business activities as they do for functional requirements. Consequently, this requires companies to possess new forms of knowledge and processes that allow them to create deeper connections with their customers online. Current literature and industry evidence demonstrate the capability of designers in creating innovative and engaging products (Straker & Wrigley, 2015).
User emotions have been an integral element of product design discourse since the 1980s. However, the first emergence of emotional aspects of design as a particular research area took place in 1999. Emotional design is described as the creation of value through emotional connections humans have to everyday objects and products. Emotions are functional in this process, as they pull us towards certain people, objects, actions and ideas and push us away from others (Frijda, 1986). Pleasant emotions pull us towards products that are (or promise to be) beneficial, considering that unpleasant emotions will push us from those that are (or promise to be) adverse to our well-being (Desmet, 2008). It is this personal significance of a product, rather than the product itself, which creates a connection. Fineman (2004) critically examined the growth of emotion measurement in organizational behaviour, concluding that it is possible to research emotion without measuring it. Fineman (2004, p. 732) also explains that emotions can be located in ‘reports of visceral sensations, in language used, and in the kinds of social setting that circumscribe what we feel or display’. By ignoring the emotional content within texts, it may reduce the validity and ability to interpret the text. However, there are some difficulties in analysing the affective content of the text, many stemming from the fact that there is a significant number of emotions that are not semantically distinct (Carley, 1990). A range of researchers have attempted to classify, define and measure emotions (Boehner, DePaula, Dourish & Sengers, 2007; Desmet, 2005; Norman, 2004; Richins, 1997); however, no method for analysing mission statements into emotive states exists. Therefore, this study aims to understand the emotion behind the company strategy and how they can be used to inform the design of digital channel engagements.
Methodology
To research the dynamics of company strategy (mission statement), emotions and digital channel engagements, this study is separated into two key stages, (1) digital channel relationship typologies and (2) coding mission statements. Results from a previous study (Straker et al., 2015) outlined the digital channel usage of 100 companies. The same companies were analysed in this study building upon the results by examining the relationship between digital channel typologies and the emotional codes of mission statements.
Stage 1: Digital Channel Relationship Typologies
Content analysis was conducted in 100 international companies which represent a spread of companies based on the industry, sector, size, age and location. All companies are business to customer (B2C) companies and were spread across 16 different industries. All data came from publicly available third-party digital resources such as websites, social media pages, online trade publications and annual company reports (details for each company and the primary data sources used refer to Appendix 1). To explore and gain a clearer understanding of digital channels and their usage, Table 1 outlines the different digital channel typologies, digital touchpoints and the content and purpose of each.
Appendix 1
Digital Channel Typologies and Touchpoints
Stage 2: Coding Mission Statements
The second stage of this research was to analyse the mission statements of the same 100 companies. The analysis protocol follows that implemented in Straker and Wrigley’s (2018) study of 100 airport mission statements. For the content analysis, a mission statement was defined as (a) a statement of up to 50 words defining their overarching purpose or reason for existence and (b) found on the company’s website under the tab ‘about us’ or in corporate documents such as annual reviews. For this study Desmet’s (2004) emotional typology was chosen for the analysis of the affective content of the mission statements. Through the use of emergent coding (Haney, Russell, Gulek & Fierros, 1998) and content analysis, 22 emotions, along with the eliciting conditions, were used to analyse as coding index (Desmet, 2004). To overcome the limitations of a content analysis approach, in particular, the use of secondary sources, three researchers collected and analysed the data independently. The use of this technique was based on Begley’s (1996) investigator triangulation. The use of multiple investigators, particularly in the coding and analysis of secondary sources, proved vital in understanding the common meaning among sources and for confirmation purposes (Denzin, 1978; Thurmond, 2001). The context of the text was analysed regarding a series of different emotions in regard to their eliciting conditions, thus creating a multi-dimensional view of the emotional context of the text. Content analysis was applied as it ‘provides a replicable methodology to access deep individual or collective structures such as values, intentions, attitudes, and cognitions’ (Duriau, Reger & Pfarrer, 2007, p. 6). The emotional coding of a company’s mission statement involves a structural analysis of the antecedent factors of perceived value (i.e., perceived quality and perceived emotion) to assess the underlying emotional drivers behind the words or phrases used. To develop an emotional coding scheme to systematically analyse company mission statements, the emotion descriptions from Desmet (2004) were implemented.
Results
Stage 1: Digital Channel Relationship Typologies
Across the 100 companies, the digital touchpoints of each were analysed in regard to the digital channel typologies (function, social, community and corporate). These were formed from the usage of the highest usage of digital touchpoints for each. Overall results are as follows: 45 per cent functional/social, 14 per cent functional/corporate, 14 per cent corporate/function, 13 per cent function/community, 11 per cent social/function, 2 per cent social/community and 1 per cent corporate/social.
Stage 2: Mission Statement Coding
Out of the 100 companies, a total of 94 mission statements were analysed, due to six company’s mission statements being unable to be obtained. From the 94 companies, the most frequent emotions were pride and stimulation (36%); 17 per cent companies were coded into pride and satisfaction, 15 were per cent pride and 10 per cent were satisfaction; the remaining companies were classified into the remaining emotion codes, which was between 4 per cent and 1 per cent of companies (Figure 1).
The following emotion-coding index (Table 2) was the result from the analysis of 94 mission statements.
Emotion-Code Index
An analysis of the frequency of emotions and industries was then conducted. The highest frequency of emotion-code pride/stimulation was common amongst all industries except not-for-profit industries and entertainment. The emotion codes placed into the ‘other’ category were those that had below 4 per cent as described in the first analysis. The two industries that only had one type of emotion code were financial services with pride/stimulation and not-for-profit industries, which was the only industry with a coding of pride/hope. The industry of consumer products and retail had the highest rate of different emotion codes. The divisions of emotion codes per industry are illustrated in Figure 2.
The next analysis explored the relationship between digital channel typologies of each company and their emotion code. The highest percentage of emotion code for each industry was then aligned with the digital channel typology to produce a digital emotion channel typology. Table 3 illustrates these findings in detail. Out of the 56 per cent per cent of companies with a digital channel typology of function/social, 89 per cent had an aligning emotion code of stimulation (either pride/stimulation, stimulation, admiration/stimulation). The industries in this typology were financial services, consumer services, transportation, travel, consumer products, retail, building/construction and education. Business services were the only industries which had no stimulation in its emotion coding but had pride instead.
Results for Digital Emotion Channel Typology via Industry (highest frequency highlighted)
The digital typology of function/corporate had 100 per cent of companies with an emotion code including pride, either in the format of pride/stimulation, pride/satisfaction, pride/hope or pride. Industries within this typology are food/beverages, mass media, not-for-profit and manufacturing.
The digital channel typology of function/community had the final two industries of entertainment and technology. The two emotion codes for these industries were pride/stimulation (50%) and pride/satisfaction (67%); however, when exploring the other codes within these industries, pride (33%), pride/satisfaction (25%) and stimulation (25%), the emotion code of pride/satisfaction comes to 92 per cent across both industries. The final industry of health, which was split between the digital channels typologies of function/social and function/corporate, had an emotion code of pride/stimulation at 75 per cent.
Implications
In marketing literature, a loyal customer can only be developed if a company can build emotional connections (Mattila, 2001; Shoemaker & Lewis, 1999). Park and Kim’s (2014) research supports the importance of a company’s awareness of this and found that a company’s digital interactions can influence a customer’s relationship with the company. A customer’s perception of the investment made by a corporation in digital engagements can impact upon the relationship quality and their willingness to provide and share positive company experiences with others (Park & Kim, 2014). The ability to create engaging interactions via digital technology with customers could earn a customer’s trust and emotional investment (advocacy) to a company (Straker & Wrigley, 2016a, 2016b).
The findings from this study can be used to guide practitioners on the selection of digital channels to ensure they are engaging and valuable to the customer. Every company evokes emotions in their customers through their actions, company culture, engagements and communication. The emotion code is the meaning of a company’s strategy and should align with how they want their customers to feel every time they engage with the company. It is proposed from understanding the emotion code of the company strategy, the requirements of the industry and customer content need that the right digital channel engagement can be designed. Table 4 provides an overview of customer needs each typology can meet, derived from the content, purpose and interaction level of each typology. The following sections outline three key digital channel typologies and electing emotional codes, explaining the best suited industries for each.
Digital Channel Selection Model
Function/Social for Stimulation
The findings suggests that the industry of consumer services would be better suited for executing the digital channel typology of function/corporate as it was found to be in common within the emotion code of pride. The relationship between this channel typology and emotion code provides insight into the primary focus of these industries (financial services, business services, transportation, travel, consumer products, retail, building/construction and education), which are primarily driven by revenue and subsequently promotion. Functional touchpoints (website and online stores) have the ability to engage through interactive media and publish news on products and campaigns; however, they are also implemented to make sales. While social touchpoints such as Facebook and Twitter’s primary purpose is for interaction via two-way communication (and participating in recreational and social activities) the connection between these two digital typologies can strengthen engagement with customers through providing functional information and support but also allows customers to engage with the company. This combination is well suited to the emotion code of stimulation, which has the eliciting condition of ‘a promise for understanding through exploration or a new action’ (Desmet, 2004). The digital typology of function and social touchpoints is suited to eliciting this emotion code, as a range of different stimuli can be provided via these touchpoints. Each social touchpoint offers value through providing relevant and interactive content (e.g., Facebook images, information and feedback through comments, Twitter news and complaints platform, Instagram news and updates through photographs and Pinterest mood boards of images for inspiration). These social touchpoints can stimulate customers through the constant content while also having the ability to interactive with the content by sharing, commenting and liking posts. Some companies also encouraged this stimulated engagement by asking customers to like, tag or hashtag them in posts to enter competitions or receive incentives (such as discounts). This consistent presence keeps customers stimulated, engaged and interested, increasing traffic between social and functional touchpoints to achieve the aims of promotion and revenue. Companies within this typology were also found to have a clear focus on their customers via their mission statements, illustrating the importance of providing digital touchpoints that provide the opportunity for a two-way conversation with customers and gain customer feedback instantly.
Function/Corporate to Build Pride
The digital channel typology for function/corporate had companies with the emotion code of pride. The eliciting condition of pride is ‘approving of one’s own praiseworthy action’ (Desmet, 2004). The customer is required to agree with the company’s actions to engage with them. The combination of these typologies is the ability to provide the functional requirements such as company information while also offering access to corporate reports required to build trust (an evident customer need within the exhibited industries of food/beverages, mass media, not-for-profit and manufacturing). Non-for-profit companies had the highest rate of corporate channels which could be related to the reliance on building customer trust, through the perception of confidence in the company’s reliability and integrity. Touchpoints in the corporate typology are suited for this aim as they are simple, require low-to-medium interaction and have a clear functional purpose. The one direction of interaction is either from company to customer or from customer to the company, with no cross-interaction possible between company and customer. Corporate touchpoints are also focused on gaining customer feedback (digital feedback forms, FAQs), providing support and information (digital media or corporate reports), promotion (digital magazine, catalogues, campaigns and advertisements), revenue (e-commerce retailers) and encouraging commitment to the company (membership and loyalty programmes). It was found that the majority of these touchpoints play a supportive role for touchpoints with the functional typology. The typology of functional and corporate touchpoints is capable of providing in-depth company information, leading to company transparency, required to build trust and over time forming pride in the company’s actions.
Function/Community for Satisfaction
The eliciting condition of satisfaction is described as ‘an expected goal realisation (or concern match)’ (Desmet, 2004). Many industries had the aim of satisfaction – the two industries within the typology of function/community were entertainment and technology.These industries usually have a unique community within them, either fans of certain entertainment types or technology companies. The cohesion between community touchpoints and satisfaction is well suited as they rely on a group or community of users. The purpose of all touchpoints within community is diversion, providing customers with the ability to participate in recreational and social activities. YouTube, Blogs, Forums and Vimeo are community touchpoints that all allow for this through greater forms of text, images and videos, with the ability for customers to comment and rate posts. The interaction with the company and a select community of customers creates an area for providing more in-depth information and communication in specific interest areas. However, the lack of engagement or activeness on these touchpoints can lead to the disconnection and loss of community. Most blogs and forums demonstrated interaction through asking questions, with many answers being provided by other customers. Being able to connect to smaller communities through these touchpoints creates the perception of business about people, enabling the customer to feel as though they are a part of a community. As like-minded customers engage via community touchpoints, they can share tips, provide support, photos and comments to create a high level of customer-created content that can be shared via their personal digital touchpoints. These customer comments, insights and tips provided on community touchpoints have the opportunity to heighten the level of satisfaction of customers and the ability to form connections by communicating a lifestyle aligned with the company objectives, which is the key difference to the social digital typology.
Summary
This article illustrates that the analysis of a company’s strategy into an emotion code/s and allows a focus on what should be communicated and through what digital channel. The main implementations of this research include:
Understanding what emotions are associated with the company strategy and that this meaning is supported by the right digital channel typology and touchpoints. Delivering the appropriate meaning is important in building equity in the company. Consistently communicating appropriate digital content that aligns with the company’s emotion code to design desired digital channel engagements. Choosing the right digital touchpoint to communicate company value, while also addressing customer needs. All engagements with customers should reflect the meaning and value of the company’s strategy (emotion code) and match either the customer need or align with their values.
Mission statements were chosen for this study due to their accessibility via public documents and are by definition outward looking; however, when conducting research within a company, internal information could be used to conduct the emotional coding (Straker & Wrigley, 2016c). Future research will aim to understand the emotional needs of customers and examine if emotions can evoke certain digital customer behaviours that align with the company’s emotion code. By examining company strategy to inform the value and meaning of it, practitioners are placed in a position to design sophisticated digital channel engagements that not only meet the aims of the company strategy but also align with customers’ identities and values.