Interesting numbers: An ethnographic account of quantification, marketing analytics and facial coding data

Abstract

This article asks why facial coding, a method for understanding emotions that was rejected by mainstream psychology for over century, has emerged as a popular method in contemporary marketing. Reading ethnographic, historic and technical data sets, the article argues that facial coding works because it shifts the task of quantification from humans to computers. This grants facial coding an appearance of objectivity that allows marketing practitioners to open up new ways of understanding, talking about and acting in markets that go beyond the data itself. Informed by science and technology studies, the article offers the concept of interesting numbers to illuminate these contradictory tendencies in the quantification of consumer behaviours. It alerts us to the importance of the agents and forms of quantification in selling a measure to marketers. In short, the article shows that, when it comes to marketing measures, the numbers count.