netrashetty
Netra Shetty
Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV) a Fortune 500 company, provides information management systems and services to the financial and insurance industries. Leading services include transaction processing, outsourcing, business process outsourcing (BPO), software and systems solutions. The company serves more than 16,000 clients worldwide.[1] Fiserv has been ranked the largest provider of information technology services to the financial services industry worldwide from 2005-2009 except in 2007 when it gave up the position to Fidelity National Information Services.[2] Fiserv reported more than $4.7 billion in total revenue for 2008
"We found that measuring the degree of dispersion in eye-movement patterns was directly related to distraction, and that the farther away a person's gaze is from that of other viewers, the more likely this person is to zap the commercial," Teixeira says. "We think that's something that can be used very efficiently—advertisers can see where they begin to lose people. Attention, as any other scarce resource, should be managed."
Cost-free fix
From a managers' perspective, altering the commercials to mimic a pulsing strategy is a virtually cost-free fix for a significant payoff, with zapping rates for some commercials reduced by as much as 25 percent in a lab experiment. If a company is paying to advertise on prime-time television during a show with an estimated 5 million viewers, 50 to 60 percent of those viewers (2.5 to 3 million people) can be lost with usual zapping rates; as many as 1 million could be recaptured by using the pulsing strategy.
"This isn't a constraint for the creative talents of advertisers," Teixeira says. "It's a generalized finding that companies across the board can benefit from this communication strategy of pulsing. And factors such as irritation and likability remain constant, so it doesn't solve one problem at the expense of another."
In a future paper, Teixeira will go deeper into evaluating the emotions of viewers.
"To make this analysis even more useful, we need to get a measure of the enjoyment or the feeling a person is experiencing while watching a commercial—and we want that to be as unobtrusive as the eye tracker, at the same level of microsecond measures." To do this, Teixeira uses an eye-tracking setup that also films a viewer's face: Software detects facial deviations and analyzes universal facial expressions for joy, disgust, sadness, anger, surprise, and fear. "This software enables us to understand the likelihood of each person feeling these six basic emotions so that we can understand on a moment-to-moment basis what a viewer is looking at as well as what they're feeling at any given moment," Teixeira says. "It's a way to measure attention and emotions as drivers of consumer behavior."
Will these findings influence how advertisers craft their ads in the future? Teixeira notes that there is already some evidence of pulsing in ads, as in the award-winning "The Happiness Factory" for Coca-Cola, and various automobile commercials that briefly show the brand logo of a car from various angles as it maneuvers a winding road.
"Sometimes advertisers say that they're creative and can't be constrained by science or academic research," he says. "But this isn't really a constraint, and our results show that it can help advertisers achieve the goal of getting their message out to more people."
In order to improve the quality and speed of service production, players in the service industry tend to isolate or separate the different supporting activities or the back-room activities that are vital in order to complete the service operation but are not visible to the customers. However, the said strategy is not always applicable for all companies or players in the service industry. It will be dependent on the marketing strategy being employed by a certain firm.
McDonald’s will be one of the most important cases which will be associated with isolating supporting activities to backrooms. As part of its marketing strategy, McDonald’s brand promises about the efficiency and cleanliness of their facilities and procedures, particularly regarding the process of preparing food ordered by customers. This also focused on the aspect of franchising, especially because the company is facing problems regarding the standards of its franchises. Because of that, hiding their backroom activities will be against their promise, because it will be hard for the customers to know whether the restaurant that they visiting is following the standards of the restaurant. Furthermore, the promise of the company will not be convincing for the customers because they cannot see what is going on inside the backroom. Aside from that hiding the cooking and preparation of food in the backroom can also raise different issues about the cleanliness of the company, which can affect the brand image and meaning of the company that will affect its entire position and share in the market.
In that case, it will be important for McDonald’s to learn from the case of Sbarro, with an open kitchen installed, which enables the customers to watch the pizza-makers spinning pizza dough behind the counter, thus, enable the customers to see that the facilities used and processes applied are all based on high standards.
"We found that measuring the degree of dispersion in eye-movement patterns was directly related to distraction, and that the farther away a person's gaze is from that of other viewers, the more likely this person is to zap the commercial," Teixeira says. "We think that's something that can be used very efficiently—advertisers can see where they begin to lose people. Attention, as any other scarce resource, should be managed."
Cost-free fix
From a managers' perspective, altering the commercials to mimic a pulsing strategy is a virtually cost-free fix for a significant payoff, with zapping rates for some commercials reduced by as much as 25 percent in a lab experiment. If a company is paying to advertise on prime-time television during a show with an estimated 5 million viewers, 50 to 60 percent of those viewers (2.5 to 3 million people) can be lost with usual zapping rates; as many as 1 million could be recaptured by using the pulsing strategy.
"This isn't a constraint for the creative talents of advertisers," Teixeira says. "It's a generalized finding that companies across the board can benefit from this communication strategy of pulsing. And factors such as irritation and likability remain constant, so it doesn't solve one problem at the expense of another."
In a future paper, Teixeira will go deeper into evaluating the emotions of viewers.
"To make this analysis even more useful, we need to get a measure of the enjoyment or the feeling a person is experiencing while watching a commercial—and we want that to be as unobtrusive as the eye tracker, at the same level of microsecond measures." To do this, Teixeira uses an eye-tracking setup that also films a viewer's face: Software detects facial deviations and analyzes universal facial expressions for joy, disgust, sadness, anger, surprise, and fear. "This software enables us to understand the likelihood of each person feeling these six basic emotions so that we can understand on a moment-to-moment basis what a viewer is looking at as well as what they're feeling at any given moment," Teixeira says. "It's a way to measure attention and emotions as drivers of consumer behavior."
Will these findings influence how advertisers craft their ads in the future? Teixeira notes that there is already some evidence of pulsing in ads, as in the award-winning "The Happiness Factory" for Coca-Cola, and various automobile commercials that briefly show the brand logo of a car from various angles as it maneuvers a winding road.
"Sometimes advertisers say that they're creative and can't be constrained by science or academic research," he says. "But this isn't really a constraint, and our results show that it can help advertisers achieve the goal of getting their message out to more people."
In order to improve the quality and speed of service production, players in the service industry tend to isolate or separate the different supporting activities or the back-room activities that are vital in order to complete the service operation but are not visible to the customers. However, the said strategy is not always applicable for all companies or players in the service industry. It will be dependent on the marketing strategy being employed by a certain firm.
McDonald’s will be one of the most important cases which will be associated with isolating supporting activities to backrooms. As part of its marketing strategy, McDonald’s brand promises about the efficiency and cleanliness of their facilities and procedures, particularly regarding the process of preparing food ordered by customers. This also focused on the aspect of franchising, especially because the company is facing problems regarding the standards of its franchises. Because of that, hiding their backroom activities will be against their promise, because it will be hard for the customers to know whether the restaurant that they visiting is following the standards of the restaurant. Furthermore, the promise of the company will not be convincing for the customers because they cannot see what is going on inside the backroom. Aside from that hiding the cooking and preparation of food in the backroom can also raise different issues about the cleanliness of the company, which can affect the brand image and meaning of the company that will affect its entire position and share in the market.
In that case, it will be important for McDonald’s to learn from the case of Sbarro, with an open kitchen installed, which enables the customers to watch the pizza-makers spinning pizza dough behind the counter, thus, enable the customers to see that the facilities used and processes applied are all based on high standards.
Last edited: