The Power of Emotional Intensity in Building a Customer Experience Journey That Lasts
How do emotions shape your customers’ connection with your brand? Emotions are the invisible threads that tie customers to a brand, influencing decisions, behavior, and long-term loyalty. Yet, not all emotions are created equal. Understanding the distinction between emotional intensity and emotional strength can revolutionize the way brands approach the customer experience journey.
This blog explores the critical role emotional intensity plays in creating a customer experience journey that truly resonates. By clarifying how and why we measure both Intensity and Strength of emotional responses, we’ll uncover how brands can craft meaningful connections that stand the test of time. Let’s dive in!
Defining Strength and Intensity
The structure of the Plutchik Wheel of Emotions, the emotional model we utilize at The Rational Heart, makes it clear that both Strength and Intensity of emotional response are important metrics in understanding how emotions influence our thoughts and actions.
Strength is the magnitude at which any emotion is felt. That is how strongly the audience feels an emotion such as Joy. Strength answers the question, does this emotion resonate? Or is it felt by the audience?
Intensity refers to the specific emotion being felt and how that emotion feels when we feel it. For example, in the Vector of Joy we see in the model below that there are three emotions, low intensity serenity, mid-intensity joy, and high intensity ecstasy. In comparing the low and high intensity emotions, serenity and ecstasy, we know that when serenity (or peacefulness) is felt, it feels very different from ecstasy. At The Rational Heart, we measure both strength and intensity of emotional response, and we use that information to identify the important emotions driving client brands, products and other key stimuli.
Measuring Emotional Intensity and Emotional Strength
At The Rational Heart, measuring both the intensity and strength of felt emotions is core to the actionability of our insights. Why is that? These principles are grounded in Robert Plutchik’s Psycho-evolutionary Theory of emotions, which identifies eight basic emotions as the foundation of human emotional response: Joy, Trust, Fear, Surprise, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Anticipation.
Each of these emotions exists on a spectrum of intensity. For instance:
Joy scales from Serenity (low intensity) to Ecstasy (high intensity).
Anger ranges from Annoyance (low intensity) to Rage (high intensity).
Trust spans from Acceptance (low intensity) to Admiration (high intensity).
Importantly, these emotional intensities are, in fact, different emotions in and of themselves. While each live within the same spectrum, Serenity to Joy to Ecstasy, it is important to note that they are distinctive and different. That is to recognize that despite both being related to Joy, Serenity and Ecstasy feel very different from one another. That’s because more intense emotions create more physiological responses and often deeper emotional memories because of that response. That is, an experience that makes you feel ecstatic generates a more physiological response (imagine your heartbeat rising) and is more memorable than an experience where you felt simply at peace.
These differences in emotional intensity profoundly impact customer behavior. Feeling Ecstatic about a brand leads to stronger memories, actionable behaviors, and enduring loyalty compared to moderate Joy. By measuring whether emotions are low, moderate, or high in intensity, we help brands identify opportunities to evoke more impactful responses.
It is important to recognize that navigating the spectrum within each emotional vector is a journey customers may experience. For example, starting at a low intensity serenity (or peacefulness), a customer may begin to move to more intense Joy as their interactions with the brand and products become more meaningful and compelling. This movement is important to understand and cultivate as creating more intense emotions has an impact on behaviors.
In addition to emotional intensity, we measure emotional strength, capturing how often specific emotions are felt in response to a brand or product. Using Bayesian statistical modeling, we identify the top three or four emotions that are most influential for decision-making. For example, while buying a lawnmower may evoke practical considerations like durability, a little black dress is more likely to elicit emotions tied to confidence and excitement.
With this, we see that emotional strength is different from emotional intensity. But, together, these metrics, intensity, and strength, allow us to decode the emotional drivers behind brand and product choices, enabling more strategic positioning and messaging.
Why Emotional Intensity Matters
While emotional strength ensures that a brand is associated with positive feelings, emotional intensity transforms passive loyalty into active engagement. This is because intense emotions are more memorable and therefore more actionable, making them a powerful driver of customer behavior.
For example, two brands might both earn trust from customers. However, if Brand A pairs trust with moderate-intensity joy, while Brand B settles for low-intensity peacefulness, Brand A’s customers are more likely to form a deeper emotional connection.
How Emotional Intensity Shapes the Customer Experience Journey
A customer’s emotional journey mirrors human relationships. Think of the early excitement in a new friendship or the trust built over time in a partnership. High-intensity emotions create stronger, more enduring bonds.
How Stronger Bonds Drive Customer Behavior
To illustrate how more intense emotional bonds are meaningful to a brand, let's look at data from a well-known global retail chain. Here we can follow the customer's emotional intensity journey through the lens of their behavior.
Highlighting four emotions that are key to their customer relationships, Curiosity, Delight, Joy and Trust, let's look at how each different behavioral group of customers feels. First looking at Curiosity, we see that those who visit least frequently, Less than Monthly, have the lowest strength Curiosity across intensities. However, as we move to those who visit the store more frequently, all the way to those who make Daily visits, we see that not only does Curiosity become stronger (the height of the bar increases), but also that the intensity of that Curiosity changes as well, moving from Regard to Curiosity to Fascination. So, we learn that those who rarely visit mostly hold the store in Regard (low intensity Curiosity), while those who visit very frequently feel mid-intensity Curiosity instead, even high intensity Fascination, reflecting a stronger emotional bond. This pattern holds true across all other key resonant emotions of Delight, Joy and Trust. These patterns suggest that it is not just the strength of the emotions that customers feel that drives their behavior, but also the intensity of that emotion that creates powerful emotional bonds.
Practical Application of Emotional Intensity
Knowing where your consumers are on their emotional journey allows you to focus on moving them up the emotional intensity ladder to more meaningful emotional connections. By strategically designing touchpoints that evoke more intense emotions, brands can create unforgettable experiences within the customer experience journey.
Awareness Journey: Spark curiosity and anticipation with compelling visuals or narratives using emotions that resonate.
Consideration Stage: Build confidence and optimism with detailed insights and personalized communication.
Post-Purchase Stage: Cultivate Joy and Pride by celebrating the customer’s choice, such as through thank-you notes or loyalty rewards.
Measuring Emotional Intensity for a Stronger Customer Experience
At The Rational Heart, our emotional measurement tool is designed to evaluate both intensity and strength. By tracking these metrics, we uncover actionable insights that can help brands optimize their customer experience journeys.
Tracking Emotional Intensity
We assess whether emotions felt toward a brand are low-, moderate-, or high-intensity. This analysis highlights opportunities to amplify emotional impact at key touchpoints. This may be about helping a brand understand that strong customer Peacefulness needs to be converted to more intense Joy through communications and touchpoints, or that Acceptance of a brand needs to be shifted to more intense Trust to truly capture customer Loyalty.
Visualizing Emotional Intensity
Using our tool, we provide a clear picture of how customers emotionally engage with a brand, enabling informed decisions to enhance customer experience strategies.
Leveraging Emotional Intensity to Enhance Customer Journeys
At The Rational Heart, we specialize in helping brands understand and amplify the emotional response of their customers through their experience journeys. Our tool is designed to help you measure emotional response which allows you to uncover gaps and generate new strategies that will allow you to leave a lasting impression, whether that be through understanding which emotions resonate with your brand, or which emotional levers you need to pull to create lasting, impactful emotional bonds. By focusing on the emotions that matter most, our tool can help you create unforgettable touchpoints that resonate with your audience.
If you’re ready to measure and enhance your emotional impact so that you can build connections with your customers that will last a lifetime, contact us today!
At The Rational Heart, we understand that emotions are at the core of successful business strategies. Consumers make decisions influenced by both logic and emotion. By quantifying emotional responses through our proprietary behavioral economics approach, we provide your business with a strategic advantage. Trust in The Rational Heart to turn emotional insights into impactful business strategies. Contact us today to discover how we can help your business thrive!