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  • The mathematics of brand satisfaction by Chris Rockwell on July 30, 2008

    Design Management Institute Review has published an article I wrote recently that looks at the interplay between brand expectation and experience from a mathematical perspective. We believe it can reveal important ways for designers to strengthen brand touchpoints.

    The big idea is this: Consumer satisfaction with a product or service interaction is a function of the experiential outcome and the expectations brought to the interaction. The outcome of each interaction eventually defines the brand. Cumulative brand satisfaction then can be thought of as the sum of these interaction experiences across all brand touch points.

    When a customer has a high expectation but a poor experience with a product or brand, the expectation makes the feelings left by the experience all the worse, creating especially low satisfaction and a failure to deliver on the brand promise. Alternatively, if a customer has a low expectation but a great experience, the net effect is amplified to produce a very high satisfaction level and a positive entrenchment of the brand in the consumers mind.

    Where the experience matches a positive expectation, you have status parity – effectively a solidification of the brand though a promise kept in the consumers mind.

    In the end then, the customer determines a brand’s meaning and value, which we can represent as a mathematical formula. A company must understand the customer’s measuring stick (expectations and ideal experiences) when designing for the multiple touch points of a brand experience. Effective experiential design research is the key to successfully understanding and designing for the underlying mathematics of satisfaction.

    Want to learn more?  Download a free reprint of the complete seven-page article. (240K PDF)

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