“Product Love,” a new episode of the “What Makes Us Human” podcast series, explores why consumers feel love for certain products or brands.
The podcast’s third season -- "What Do We Know about Love?" -- showcases the newest thinking across academic disciplines about the relationship between humans and love. The series is produced by the College of Arts and Sciences in collaboration with the Cornell Broadcast Studios and features audio essays written and recorded by Cornell faculty. New episodes are released each Tuesday through the spring.
“As it turns out, the most loved product is not the one with the most quality features... The key missing ingredient in our usual approach is that it overlooks the absolutely crucial role of emotion,” Kathryn LaTour, Banfi Vintners Professor of Wine Education and Management in the School of Hotel Administration, SC Johnson College of Business, says in her podcast episode.
LaTour is an expert in the area of marketing hedonic experiences, with a particular focus on wine and gambling and the complexity of human memory. Her research takes a consumer-psychology perspective toward how marketers should approach branding, experience design, communications, and loyalty programs. She uses both experimental designs and in-depth interview techniques to better understand consumer behavior, fusing macro cultural and micro psychological dimensions to her research.
“What Makes Us Human” podcasts are available for download on iTunes and SoundCloud and for streaming on the A&S humanities page, where text versions of the essays are also posted.
