Many companies have outstanding products in terms of performance, technology and features. And yet, surprisingly, sales don't take off. Readers of this article will learn how leading products and services captivate the marketplace by having more than just the functions and features that customers value. Leading products also inspire and deliver benefits through emotional fulfillment that customers enjoy and seek out.

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. In Chapter 1, Product Emotions (16 pages), the authors consider the relationship between the customer and a product. The authors differentiate between using emotions to encourage the purchase of a product versus developing a product experience that produces an emotion, with the latter as the desired goal. They also explain how branding plays a significant role in product emotions because it forms the basis for the relationship between product and company. The authors argue that an emotional exchange must be genuine and lasting to be effective and that the goal of creating product emotions must be integrated into the company's overall strategy and mission, based on extensive research and careful development.

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 2, Profitability of Emotions (8 pages), shows that creating product features that engender high emotion often costs little to implement, even for products that are strong revenue sources. The authors consider examples from McDonald's, Black and Decker, and Starbucks to illustrate how low-cost product features such as hamburger wrappers or a different brand name can evoke emotions. They also consider factors that are essential in identifying and developing the right product features, including workforce training and hiring appropriate staff.

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. In Chapter 3, The High-Emotion Index: Stock Market Gains from Emotion (11 pages), the authors present their research on the profitability of product emotions. They describe the methodology used to determine if the financial gain from product emotion mitigates the costs of creating that emotion. Extending their model from individual products to the market capitalization of companies, they explain that higher-emotion stocks will outperform lower-emotion stocks, and they provide insight on what this means for managers.

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. In Chapter 4, The Paths to Emotion (20 pages), the authors outline two approaches to creating product emotion, through associated emotions or supported emotions. Associated emotions are external to the product and communicated to the customer through messaging, usually advertising. Supported emotions derive from the use of the product or service itself. The authors say that supported emotions are used less frequently and offer more powerful opportunities for managers. They illustrate each path through examples, but focus mainly on associated emotions in the chapter. They consider their own studies and other scientific research that demonstrates how associated emotion can have a positive impact on customers' perceptions of product value.

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 5, Supported Emotions: The Key to Today's Leading Products (15 pages), delves more deeply into developing an actual product that delivers a high-emotion experience. The authors analyze Apple to illustrate the benefits of successfully supported emotions throughout a product experience. They present research on product packaging to show how every product detail can be used to provide customer value, and they further explore the benefit of supported emotions in business-to-business marketing, services marketing, and in higher education. The authors conclude that successful high-emotion products meet customer needs via both emotion and functionality.

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. In Chapter 6, Product Emotion Strategy (20 pages), the authors present a three-step model for creating high-emotion products. The first step is to determine the emotions that the product can produce. The second step is to develop a strategy to produce those emotions. The third step is to take that strategy and make it a reality through the production process. The authors outline 16 core categories of positive emotions that motivate customers and show why a successful strategy requires a solid understanding of the customer. They also explain "eMap" as a tool for creating an emotion strategy in a five-step process, with real world examples from Navistar Corporation, DesignAdvance Systems, and RedZone Robotics.

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. In Chapter 7, The Emotion of Form and Touchpoints to Create It (24 pages), the authors focus on using a product's visual form to evoke emotions. They emphasize the importance of creating a "visual brand language" to link the product form and product emotion strategy. They show how Harley Davidson and Buick used consistent visual brand languages to successfully create multiple products under one brand. They explain how an effective visual brand language can drive both product development and market differentiation, drawing from Whirlpool Corporation as an example. They explain a four-step process for turning strategy into touchpoints, or points of customer interaction: identification of attributes, integration into design, product testing, and production and evolution.

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 8, Meeting Societal Needs: Positive Roles for Emotion (14 pages), explores opportunities for developing high-emotion products that address issues of sustainability, health for the aging, social action, and globalization. The authors consider efforts by companies that target an environmental problem, address a specific population group, take social action, or localize a product. They explain the benefits for companies to consider the emotions of societal issues in product and brand strategy.

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. In Chapter 9, Emotion's Role in Technology Products (10 pages), the authors consider how the value of emotion extends into markets typically regarded as non-emotional. They consider the potential for high-emotion products in the fields of nanotechnology, medical products and healthcare, space systems, and robotics. They explain why most technology and healthcare companies have not yet explored emotion in their product development and why it is increasingly important for this pattern to change. They also explore the power of aesthetically-pleasing designs and the emerging field of socially assistive robotics.

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.

The prices we encounter in the course of making a purchase can affect how much we're willing to pay for a given product--even when the goods involved are entirely unrelated.