ESF-project „Emotional Design for SMEs: Using emotional psychology for the effective communication of brands, products and services”


The fashion boutique with the personal touch, the charming bookshop next door, and the family-run brewery inn with its unique ambience, the “good feeling” when enjoying fair-trade coffee from a local coffee roaster or the luxury of hand-crafted beer and fine porcelain – these examples show that emotions are not only relevant for establishing and maintaining close interpersonal relationships. Apart from spontaneous purchase decisions at the Point-of-Sale, they may also create a strong sense of identification tying consumers to certain brands and products because they resonate with their self-image, i.e. their personal values and goals.

What exactly are emotions? What are they good for? And how can companies use them to promote their brands, products and services in accordance with their claims and values? - The ESF-funded project “Emotional Design for SMEs” wants to give practical answers to these questions by developing a web-based training that brings the experience of nine-teen small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) together with recent findings from emotional psychology and perception research.

This project is funded within the program “Netzgestützter Wissenstransfer von Hochschulen in Unternehmen” (WiT-HuB) by the European Social Fund in Bavaria (ESF in Bayern), the University of Bamberg and the government of Bavaria (Germany). For further information please download our leaflet.

Contact persons for “Emotional Design for SMEs”:

  • Prof. Dr. Claus-Christian Carbon (Head of Department)
  • Dipl.-Psych. Stefan Ortlieb
  • Dr. Dipl.-Psych. Marius Raab (B.Sc.)