Marketers love emotion. We always have.
It’s the lifeblood of campaigns, the spark behind virality, the reason some ideas make us smile while others leave us cold. Neuroscience and psychology have shown that people often make decisions intuitively, long before they can explain them. It’s tempting, then, to believe emotion might hold the key to predicting which ideas will thrive in market.
The logic sounds appealing: if most decisions are made emotionally, why not just measure emotion directly?
But the evidence tells a more complex story. Decades of academic research and thousands of validated market tests reveal that feeling good about an idea is not the same as buying it and certainly not the same as buying it twice.
The Promise and Limits of Emotion
Measures of emotional response are useful. They help us see whether an idea feels fluent, intuitive, or distinct. They can identify early promise and refine creative routes. But when it comes to forecasting trial or sales, emotion on its own is a weak predictor.
Meta-analyses by Ipsos across more than 1,200 concept tests found that implicit and emotional-response metrics correlate with in-market trial at roughly r = 0.3 – a moderate relationship at best. Traditional concept-testing metrics such as purchase intent, relevance, and believability achieve r = 0.5-0.6.
Integrating emotional measures with traditional metrics improves accuracy slightly, to about r = 0.6-0.65, but emotion alone does not outperform established methods.
NIQ BASES’ validation of over 1,300 innovations reaches a similar conclusion: the strongest predictors of launch success are a clearly articulated consumer need, a credible reason-to-believe, and distinctive execution. “Emotional warmth” or “liking” adds little incremental power once these are included in the model.
These findings aren’t just statistics; behavioural science explains why emotion alone falls short.
Why Feeling Doesn’t Equal Trial
Emotional reactions tend to predict attention or curiosity (the “notice-me” effect) but not behavioural conversion. Research in Psychological Science by Michel Pham shows that affective responses dominate when cognitive effort is low, such as impulse purchases, but their predictive value collapses once trade-offs like price, habit, or risk enter the picture.
Bagozzi and colleagues in the Journal of Consumer Research likewise found that affect predicts choice only when it aligns with a salient goal; otherwise, rational evaluation overwhelms it.
In practical terms, emotions can open the door, but they don’t decide whether consumers walk through it, or whether they come back again.
That helps explain why emotionally charged launches such as Coca-Cola Life, Pepsi Refresh, and the early wave of Beyond Meat products generated enthusiasm yet quickly stalled. Each evoked positive emotion around health, ethics, or purpose but failed to deliver a clear functional benefit or credible value equation once consumers engaged System 2 thinking.
Evidence from the Market
Real-world examples reinforce this pattern.
Dove Real Beauty succeeded not merely because consumers loved the message but because the product’s moisturising performance substantiated it.
Tide Pods became a category revolution only after extensive simulated-market testing confirmed that consumers understood and trusted the “one pod, one wash” concept.
Nespresso took nearly two decades to perfect its closed system before emotional storytelling (“What else?”) made it iconic.
In every case, emotional connection amplified success, it never created it alone.
So What Should We Measure?
If the goal of concept testing is to predict trial before the product exists, the evidence is unequivocal: emotion alone is not the answer.
Predictive accuracy improves when testing integrates emotional fluency with rational metrics that capture relevance, credibility, and intent.
A robust concept-testing programme should therefore:
- Measure relevance and credibility. Does it solve something consumers value, and do they believe it?
- Assess intuitive and emotional response. Ensure the idea feels fluent and distinctive.
- Forecast behavioural likelihood. Use competitive or choice-based purchase-intent models where possible.
- Interpret results in context. Recommendations should reflect the strategic role of the concept, base, stretch, or halo innovation.
That hierarchy mirrors how consumers actually decide.
Emotion’s Proper Role
Emotion is invaluable for guiding creativity and ensuring human resonance. But when it becomes the lens for judging commercial potential, it risks misleading teams into chasing warmth instead of worth.
Feeling something about an innovation doesn’t mean we’ll act on it.
The weight of evidence, from neuroscience to industry meta-data, points to a single conclusion: the innovations that win are those that combine emotional appeal with a clear need, credible promise, and believable delivery.
Emotion starts the spark; behaviour proves the fire.
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