Measuring human motivations and emotions is difficult. Three reasons for this are that

• Verbal questions tend to rationalize responses
• Emotional language terms can be very difficult to translate
• Different cultures have different values

More broadly, emotions are highly contextual and latest theories of emotion, see them as mental constructions in the same way that perceptions are mental constructions based on external cues. Emotions and perceptions are both processed in the same parts of the brain and help us to interpret and adapt to the environment around us, directing us towards our goals (see Lisa Feldman Barrett’s book for more on this). Read more »

In a recent cross-cultural survey, TapestryWorks talked to more than 1,200 women across four countries and, in this article, we focus on Thai women and their feelings about beauty. Read more »

Earlier this year, TapestryWorks collaborated with ABN Impact in Jakarta, to uncover the emotional journey of women’s beauty routines (read more here). As part of this work and client event, we also looked at women’s reactions to examples of advertising from beauty brands including Garnier, Wardah, L’Oreal and Sari Ayu, covering a range of International and local brands.

As with the diary work, we used StoryWorks Visual Think cards to capture the emotions associated with each advert and also the talent appearing in each execution using ABN Impact’s ‘Jakarta Beauty’ online community members. Read more »

“Forget artificial intelligence – in the brave new world of big data, it’s artificial idiocy we should be looking out for.” (Tom Chatfield)

Rather than focusing on artificial idiocy, let’s think about how we can be naturally intelligent in our use of any size of data to be better marketers. While data is a powerful tool to provide evidence for better decision-making, too often it misses the human empathy, cultural perspective and creative thinking that make us wiser. Read more »

There are several myths I have heard about Indonesian beauty, mostly from outside Indonesia (and often from outside Asia). The first myth is that Indonesia is not an important market for beauty products, and that women are less engaged with beauty than in other countries. The second myth is that confidence is a key goal of female beauty, a myth that is perpetrated around the world and not just in Indonesia. And the third myth is that creating a successful beauty brand in Indonesia is all about being halal. Read more »

The standard model of market research has relied on language as the main medium for understanding behaviour for more than 100 years. Recent discoveries in psychology and behavioural economics suggest that behaviour is driven more by emotions than reason, so is language still the best medium for communication in marketing and research?

TapestryWorks recently undertook research-on-research to understand the impact of different stimuli, verbal and visual, on human responses to the same set questions (read more here). Our focus was on the motivations underlying women’s perceptions of beauty, and we ran the same study across four different countries: Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and the UK. Read more »

Global brands are facing more and more competition from local brands, even as they spend more on their marketing efforts and create greater efficiencies in their supply chains. While local brands have many advantages from being on the ground in their markets, perhaps their biggest advantage is their local cultural capital. Read more »

TapestryWorks have long used visual stimuli to capture the motivations and emotions associated with customer jobs, categories, brands and executions, and in a recent self-funded study we looked at the role of context, and specifically cultural context, in shaping the feelings of women about beauty. Read more »

Little by little the past few years have seen a weakening of the dominance of multinational brands in Asia, as local players win consumer’s hearts with greater understanding of local culture and its importance in consumer decision-making.

For example, beauty is big business in Asia, but in many countries local brands are the most popular with the highest penetration and market share, with international brands increasingly struggling to compete. In Indonesia, local brand Wardah has come from nowhere to take around one-third of the cosmetics market. It’s secret? Understanding the values of Indonesian women (and halal certification, something that has now been legislated to come into effect in the coming years). Read more »

Two years ago, TapestryWorks collaborated with ABN Impact Indonesia to explore beauty goals among Indonesian women, and exactly two years’ later we went back to their Jakarta Beauty insight community to learn more.

In our earlier study, we learnt about a range of motivations that are important to Jakarta women and the beauty that they desire, including Confidence, Knowledge, Care, Belonging, Love, Fun and the desire to be (a little) Unique. In our latest study, we decided to look more deeply into these different motivations to understand how they relate to different aspects of women’s daily lives. Read more »