Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Customer satisfaction research in environmental communication


by Eleonora Anello

One of the main goal of a communicator is to make the message effective. To avoid a flop, it’s necessary to proceed from sound facts originated from scientific researches and to plan the communicative action in an effective way.

These years in the psychology field there have been many achievements. New tools for investigating customers’ opinions have been searched, going beyond the classic theories and being aware of avoiding thought processes such as rationalization and social desirability, which could distort facts. For investigating the most unconscious individuals’ reasons was created MuSeS, a customer satisfaction researching system presented in 2010 in Ravenna, under the patronage of Ente Bacino Padova 2. During that occasion its possible use in environmental communication have been debated.

MuSeS (Multi-Sensory Sort) – created by Luca Cian (University of Michigan, in collaboration with University of Trieste) tries to unveil the hidden targets’ needs in order to make it more involved and cooperative. What is, to be precise, MuSeS? We asked its creator.

«MuSeS is a tool for investigating people’s expectations, especially concerning their unconscious and multi-sensorial side. Traditional methods of survey emphasize just a few elements, mainly cognitive, that seem not to be the most important factors for bringing about a change of behavior and attitude. Economic psychology and marketing literature underlined that majority of the causes of our decision are not conscious».

Which are the real innovation of MuSeS?
«There are different novelties compared to pre-existing tools: focusing on unconscious customers’ expectations rather than on cognitive aspects; being based on multi-sensorial stimuli; avoiding the traditional division between qualitative and quantitative methods».

Something more specific?
«Regarding the first point, traditional methods are mainly based on written questionnaires. This presumes that delving into unconscious issues is useless and that expectations are something writable. MuSeS instead bases on projective techniques coming from clinic psychology, able to overtake rational barriers and to investigate the most unconscious and unaware aspects. Regarding the second point, MuSeS is the first projective technique which can investigate all the five human senses. This enables us to implement 360-degrees communication strategies, based on visual, auditive, olfactory, taste and tactile stimuli. Lastly, on the third point, we found a mathematical algorithm. This enabled us to enforce a computation objectivity (typical of the quantitative research) on the projective tests results, typically qualitative investigation tool».

MuSeS met with many successes in the international scientific community, both when it was presented to ICP – International Congress of Psychology – held in Berlin (Germany), and during the exhibition of EAWOP - European Congress of Work and Organizational Psychology – held in Santiago de Compostela (Spain).

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