案例 | Affectiva X Mars

Affectiva於2009年誕生於MIT 媒體實驗室項目，是全球最領先的情感 AI初創企業。其核心技術Affdex情緒識別技術，通過網路攝像頭來捕捉記錄人們的微表情，任何刻意隱藏的開心，悲傷，蔑視或其他情緒，都別想騙過Affdex的火眼晶晶。目前全球100強企業中有三分之一是Affectiva的客戶，用情緒識別技術來觀察消費者對數字化體驗的情緒反應，以提升市場調研結果的精準度。

英文原文

Mars, Inc. wanted to evaluate if their advertising evoked the intended emotion of their consumers and if their emotional response to the ad could predict sales.

THE SOLUTION

Using Affdex for Market Research, Mars and Affectiva developed the first and largest research study tying facial reactions and emotional responses to sales effectiveness. Over 1,500 participants from France, Germany, UK & the US viewed over 200 ads, while their facial reactions were captured via webcam, and emotional responses were analyzed. Using single-source data, the emotional responses were tied to the sales volume for each product line: chocolate, gum, pet care and instant foods.

THE RESULTS

Affixed facial coding and emotion analytics was able to more accurately predict short-term sales than relying on self-report methods alone. However, combining facial coding with the self-report survey provided the best sales prediction results, with an accuracy of 75%.

With Affdex, Mars also found that across product lines, chocolate ads elicited the highest emotional engagement, while food ads elicited the least; and across markets the US was the most expressive while the UK was the least expressive.

Source: Affectiva official website

案例分析

1. How could Affdex improve market research efficiency and sales effectiveness?

知識點：IB教材 Unit 4.2 Market research

Market research is the process of collecting, recording and analysing data about customers, competitors and the market. It aims to reduce the risks associated with new product launches, predict future demand changes and market trends, and assess the most favoured designs, flavours, styles, promotions and packages for a product.

Traditionally one of the primary research methods used to know about how target markets view a product or tv commercial is focus group. In a focus group, people might not express what they really think of the product or the commercial because of the so-called group psychology (從眾心理). We all tend to act and express ideas in conformity with peers to obtain a sense of engagement in a community with shared values, which leads to inaccurate market information and higher risks of failure of launching a new product or a new commercial if the marketers who carry out the focus group fail to capture the micro expression of testers. However, the diminutive information human could possibly miss won』t be missed by emotion Artificial Intelligence. As shown in the case, combining facial coding with traditional market research methods provides the best sales prediction results, with an accuracy of 75%.

2. How would technological innovation and cultural differences affect the marketing strategies of a business?

這是一個典型的CUEGIS小論文題目，涉及I (innovation)和U (culture) 兩個因素對企業決策的影響。Affectiva案例恰好可以做為一個新穎的論據分別來支撐兩個分論點。

再深入思考一下，一家企業是否應該花費高昂的成本使用情感AI來輔助傳統市場調研來了解市場偏好，提升銷售預測？情感AI能在多大程度上提升市場調研和銷售預測的效率？在多大程度上提升企業的盈利能力呢？Should Mars use emotion AI technology on advertising/marketing to drive sales? To what extent could Mars increase its profitability with emotion AI technology? 這其實可以是很好的商業IA或EE論文的選題。

這樣的研究選題新穎，緊跟商業前沿趨勢，並且沒有顯而易見的答案，需要你展開二手數據調研，就Mars使用情感AI的成本和收益展開分析(cost and revenue analysis)，做盈利能力分析的縱向比較和橫向比較(profitability analysis comparison over time within the company and benchmark with competitors)，對企業花費高昂的初始投資的投資回報率進行預估(ROI, ROCE analysis), 從而做出風險評估和風險管理，最終你的結論。如果根據前面的分析，潛在風險低於收益，則結論為Mars should use emotion AI technology on marketing to drive sales；反之潛在風險高於收益，則結論為should not.

由此可見，養成每周閱讀英語商業新聞的習慣對IB Business的EE, IA和CUEGIS論文寫作都會有潛移默化的幫助。博觀而約取,厚積而薄發。