When building a house, you start with a blueprint. Similarly, creating a meaningful customer experience begins with a map — a tool to visualize the entire journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase interactions.¶
Customer journey mapping (CJM) is widely used in retail to analyze and plan touch points before, during and after purchase. It provides a detailed view of the customer’s shopping process, helping retailers understand how customers interact with their brand at every stage. By focusing on the key steps in the journey, CJM helps retailers enhance experiences and resolve pain points.
However, while CJM does a great job of laying out the steps in a customer’s journey, it doesn’t fully capture the emotional factors that influence decisions. That’s where an emotional journey map (EJM) makes a difference — uncovering the feelings and experiences that drive satisfaction and decision-making.
Why Understanding Emotions Is Key to Boosting Customer Experience
Customer experience encompasses cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensory and social responses to a brand’s offering. The emotional aspect is particularly critical as it shapes how customers feel, think and act. Neuroscience shows that emotions are core drivers of behavior, processed in the same brain areas responsible for decision-making.
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In retail, emotions significantly impact customer behavior. While emotions naturally vary from person to person, they’re also influenced by the store environment — from design and music to scents. Retailers often use atmospheric elements to evoke positive emotions and, ultimately, increase sales.
For example, Whole Foods uses warm spotlights in the produce section to make fruits and vegetables look fresher and more appealing. Cinnabon places its stores near mall entrances or busy areas, relying on the smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls to draw people in. Similarly, at Iroha Mart, Wayvee Analytics used environmental stimuli — uplifting music and increased space in front of the shelves during the promotional period — to speed up customer movement, resulting in a 17% increase in sales.
While these strategies play a key role in shaping customer emotions, having the tools to measure and understand their reactions is just as important. Deeper insights help businesses to make smarter decisions and refine customer touch points effectively. Incorporating emotional journey mapping (EJM) allows retailers to go beyond observing customer actions and uncover the underlying “why.” This deeper understanding helps brands see the reasons behind pain points, tailor experiences, foster connections and build loyalty.
To illustrate, imagine a frustrated customer searching for a hard-to-find spice in a cluttered aisle. They’re feeling overwhelmed and impatient — hardly the right moment to pitch a promotion or upsell. Contrast this with the same customer in the candy aisle, considering a chocolate bar. The anticipation of pleasure puts them in a better mood, creating the perfect opportunity for engagement or a complementary suggestion.
These examples might seem simple, but every customer has a unique emotional journey shaped by expectations versus reality. A well-constructed EJM helps retailers identify where those moments of misalignment happen, turning potential frustrations into opportunities for connection and satisfaction. This is especially critical as 73% of consumers cite customer experience as a key factor in their purchasing decisions, making it a direct driver of sales and loyalty.
From Movement to Emotion: Tools for Measuring Customer Sentiment In-Store
Talking about customer journey mapping, there are now many AI-powered tools that track every step of a customer, from their online search to moving between different sections in the store. Emotional journey mapping, however, is more complex. Emotions are personal, and understanding them is challenging due to tool limitations, privacy concerns and potential biases.
Traditional tools like Voice of Customer (VOC) platforms capture direct input through surveys and questionnaires. While valuable for future planning, they often reflect post-purchase feedback rather than emotions experienced in the moment. Additionally, customers are increasingly fatigued by feedback requests via push notifications, SMS and emails, perceiving them as checklist items rather than genuine engagement.
Heat mapping and behavioral analytics tools offer indirect insights into customer behavior by analyzing traffic patterns, dwell times and customer flow. For instance, understanding which paths customers take and how long they spend in specific areas can indicate interest, convenience or even confusion.
Advanced emotion recognition tools take this a step further, using facial recognition technology to analyze video footage, identifying emotions like joy or frustration. This approach captures emotional reactions as customers interact with displays, but its reliance on video raises privacy concerns.
An innovative, privacy-conscious alternative measures emotional responses without cameras by leveraging radio waves and AI. This technology tracks physiological responses, such as breathing patterns or micro-movements, to assess customer sentiment and reactions to shelves, pricing, assortment and satisfaction.
As the tools for understanding customer emotions continue to advance, retailers have an opportunity to go beyond surface-level interactions. By interpreting emotional responses and aligning them with the broader customer journey, they can craft experiences that are not just efficient but genuinely intuitive.
While challenges like privacy concerns and implementation complexities remain, these can be addressed through strategic planning, testing and selecting the right tools. Emotional journey mapping represents a shift in how retailers connect with their customers — transforming transactions into relationships rooted in empathy and understanding. By prioritizing emotional insights, retailers can create environments where customers feel seen, valued and understood, setting the stage for loyalty that goes far beyond the checkout counter.
Anton Timashev is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovator, currently serving as the CEO of Wayvee Analytics, a tech company specializing in AI-powered emotion recognition technology to measure customer satisfaction in brick-and-mortar retail. Known for his strategic vision, Timashev has an impressive track record in tech startups. He co-founded ZERO10, a provider of AR and AI try-on solutions for fashion retail, and played a key role at Veeam Software, where he was instrumental in developing Veeam Backup & Replication and managing significant business deals. Timashev is also a co-founder of Tetrad.vc, a venture capital firm dedicated to helping startups launch, scale and innovate.
