Taking Action: Transform Your Products and Brands to Captivate Customers

Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers is a 10-chapter book published in 2010 by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. and written by Peter Boatwright, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tepper School of Business, and Jonathan Cagan, the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. The authors explain how and why evoking an emotional connection with the customer enables certain products to enjoy market success. They explore key concepts around high-emotion products and present research that proves the value of emotion in product success. Drawing on numerous real-world examples, including an extended case study of Navistar, they outline a model for creating high-emotion products in three phases: identify emotional opportunity, develop a product strategy, and transfer strategy into product features. They provide practical guidance and insight for managers. Chapter 10, Taking Action: Transform Your Products and Brands to Captivate Customers (5 pages), provides a brief practical review of the authors model for creating high-emotion products. The authors outline two strategic approaches for product emotions and outline the risks and benefits of each approach. In the first, they advise managers to "take the plunge" and move quickly in assessing a product portfolio and provide guidance on crafting a product emotion strategy. The second approach-"slow and steady"-allows managers to focus on a single product with a more conservative product development effort. They also consider the tradeoffs between the two approaches.

• Innovation
• Brand management
• Consumer behavior
• Psychology and neuroscience
• Strategic positioning