Eye blinks as an objective measureas of consumers emotional and motivational attitude towards brands

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether eye blink behavior can be used as an objective measurement of consumers’ emotional and motivational attitude towards brands. This research consists of four parts: 1. Pilot-test 2. First experiment 3. Second experiment 4. the expansion of the first experiment In the first part we designed a pilot test with the aim to verify whether we can use the eye blinks rates to measure levels of desire for a certain brand. Seven subjects participated in the pilot test, where they were exposed to visual stimuli divided in three categories (food, sexual stimulation and smoking) and a control category with neutral pictures (undesirable, neutral objects). Secondly, in the first experiment seven subjects were instructed to sit in front of a monitor to watch some pictures in two product categories, namely lingerie and food each divided in two classes: cheap brands and expensive brands. The purpose of this experiment is to measure a level of desire for a specific brand (cheap or expensive) in the product categories food and lingerie. We then developed a second experiment which is a combination of pictures of desirable products in combination with the subject imagining themselves in a purchasing situation. The experiment consists of two stages, the observation stage and the active stage. The second stage contains: three imaginary tasks and a brand awareness and recognition task. In the last experiment we used the format of the first experiment and we increased the subjects from seven to sixteen. The results of the pilot-test suggest that we can use the eye blink rates as a measurement of desire and attraction, although a small variation between the resting stage and the observation stage. This allowed us to start with the next experiment, which has the same format as the pilot, but we increased the number of lingerie and food. The results of experiment 1 are inconsistent with the findings of Walla et al. (2011), which suggest that individuals blink more when they are exposed to desirable objects. The structure of the second experiment was too complex for the participants, which influenced the subjects’ attention during the experiment. The results of last experiment suggest a statistical significant relation between the eye blink behavior in the two product categories, food and lingerie. On the other hand, we did not find such statistical significance between the cheap and expensive brands for both product categories.