94 JOURNAL OF COSMETIC SCIENCE MODIFICATION OF COSMETIC PRODUCT PERCEPTION BY EMOTIONAL FACTORS Wolf Eisfeld •, Ph.D. and Wolfram Boucsein 2 •Cognis Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG, Research & Technology, 40589 Diisseldorf 2Institute of Physiological Psychology, University of Wuppertal Introduction The modem consumer will only buy a cosmetic product if he can perceive a performance benefit in comparison to other products. Thus, product performance is a key issue for the personal care industry. In the classical approach, product performance in the laboratory is evaluated via two tracks: on the one hand by objective physical, chemical or biological methods, and on the other hand by subjective panel tests. From the combination of both approaches, conclusions are drawn how the product will be perceived by the consumer in the marketplace. However, it is well known that unconscious, often uncontrollable emotional factors strongly influence our supposedly "objective" perception. Psychophysiological Measurements and Tactile Feel We have developed a methodology, the so-called "objective emotional assessment" (OEA), to take into account these psychological factors and to measure them in an objective and reproducible way. In the study presented in this paper, we focused our interest on the tactile perception of human hair, and how this perception can be modulated by different "product worlds". Tactile perception is indeed one of the three most important senses we rely on in evaluating cosmetic product effects, besides vision and olfaction. However, tactile feel is very difficult to quantify objec- tively, and we often have to use the word "like" to describe our sensory perception when touching things. The OEA method offers us the enormous advantage to investigate tactile sensations via their effects on our central nerve system, without having to ask the volunteers directly. In our study, we let volunteers manipulate differently treated hair strands with their fingers and si- multaneously recorded a comprehensive set of psychophysiological parameters like skin conductance (= electrodermal activity, EDA), heartbeat (EKG), blood flow and muscular movement in the face. All these physiological reactions are the result of unconscious mental processes in the brain that we can- not control. Thus, from such measurements, the emotional state of the test persons can be inferred with high accuracy and without possible problems of faking. From a temporal point of view, these processes are generated much earlier than our speech, and thus they offer us a direct and elementary insight into the psyche of our volunteers. Design of Experiment In our study, we tested three different types of hair - untreated brown european hair, secondly hair washed with a very simple reference shampoo, and finally hair washed with a test shampoo that con- rained a special ingredient (nanoparticular layered silicate) that slightly modified the tactile properties of hair. In order to investigate the mutual dependency between objective product properties and a subjective context, we introduced so-called "product worlds" into our experiment: We wanted to know in which way a story, an artificial environment and spontaneous associations can affect the supposedly "objec- tive" assessment of products by panelists. Therefore, we underlaid the tactile evaluation procedure with different scenarios, realized as video tapes which should bring the panelists into a certain situ- ational, associative context. We generated two different, quite contrasting product worlds, an emo- tional one and a technical one, the first one displaying a positive holiday environment, the latter one showing hair structure, product performance and physical measurements in the lab.

2002 ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC MEETING 95 After having watched such a video spot, the tactile evaluation of hair tresses by the respective volun- teer was carded out: He had to put his left hand through an opening in a shield he could not look through. The tactile evaluation of the hair strands behind the shield was then done in two phases, a simple "contact phase" and a more complex "touch phase" involving active manipulation of the hair. In both phases, the physiological activity was recorded continuously. Results Out of the cornucopia of material, which was recently published in all detail by us (Boucsein et al. 2002), the paper will present some highlights, e.g. the influence of the volunteers' experience inferred from skin conductivity parameters, the effect of the product world as deducted from face muscle electrical signals, and gender-specific differences in heartbeat. The most exciting conclusions could be drawn be drawn from a multivariate analysis of the data. For the untreated hair, we found a significantly better evaluation in the emotional world. The same holds for the silicate shampoo. Just the opposite situation was found for the reference shampoo: Here, the technical world was best, whereas an emotionalization turned out to be detrimental. This result is surprising, as one could have expected that all hair samples were favored in the emotional world, which may appear to most of us to be much "better" and more friendly than the technical one. Discussion Apparently, it is a clear result from this analysis that for different products completely different prod- uct worlds are suitable. The remaining crucial question has to ask for the underlying reason: Why is the technical product world better suited for the reference shampoo, but the emotional product world better suited for the silicate shampoo and untreated hair? Our approach of resolution is based on data from a sensory assessment evaluation, where we found that the untrcated hair and silicate-shampoo- treated hair appeared to be very similar and could only be differentiated by an expert panel. The refer- ence shampoo, however, showed prominent positive effects in overall sensory performance. It thus can be concluded that the more clear-cut the actual product performance is perceivable, the more con- vincing is their embedding in a technically oriented product world. The less truly perceivable differ- ences between products appear, the more necessary and effective is an emotional product world. Without doubt, for successful marketing of a product, it is thus of crucial importance to create the suitable product world. Not only objective effects are decisive, but to a large amount emotions and associations somehow related to the product. We nowadays face the situation that in most market places and product categories, the development has advanced to such an amount that products often have reached their technical limit and cannot be differentiated any more on the basis of merely objec- tive performance. To nevertheless allow a differentiation, such products thus have to be ,,emotional- ized" with the suitable underlying concept. Literature: W. Boucsein, F. Schaefer, M. Kefel, P. Busch, W. Eisfeld "Objective emotional assessment of tactile hair properties and their modulation by different product worlds", Int. J. Cosmet. Sci. 24(3), 135-150 (2002).