In this era of science and technology, the greatest reality is perhaps the virtual reality. This oxymoronic term virtual reality indeed is very intriguing. Computers are an unavoidable aspect of today’s day to day lives and the internet has taken over almost the entire world. Now, as time is passing technology becomes more advanced and several new concepts like electronic hand gloves, digital smell, three D (3D) goggles etc are being engineered for creating more attachment to their users. The aim of this paper will be to develop a research question for XYZ company who are about to use this technology of digital smells to see if they can alter the emotional state of the users just as was attempted by Face book only with a different approach, FB wanted to carry out the experiment of altering the emotional state of the users by altering the comments in the news feed. The main purpose of this paper will be to formulate a questionnaire in order to enable XYZ Company to understand how well their digital scent technology can be used (Althobaiti et al 2015, p.182).
XYZ is an online social media marketing company like that of face book and it is about to use a very modern and new technology that is the technological use of digital scent. This digital scent technology was founded by Dexter Smith and Joel Lloyd Bellenson, who are experts in bioinformatics and genomics (Althobaiti et al 2015, p.182). They mainly aimed at finding and digitalizing a profile of biological smell. Their main take over this particular kind of techno logy was the usage of different naturally available materials like flowers, salt, water, air, fruits etc. They wanted to the device the different scientific methodologies of using these natural smells and engineering them into the framework of digital scent technology. The main purpose of this new approach will be to see if the users respond well to the olfactory senses just as they have been showing different responses to the vision, touch and auditory senses as well. They have also witnessed the experiment that was undertaken by Face book in which they wanted to alter the emotional senses of their users by tampering with the comments in the face book news feed. Though this new technology is still in its infant mode and yet has a very long way to go, it is being expected that this approach will play a very important role in the near future. The aim will be to emit different types of smells or odours for different tasks. For example, among a group of several different kinds of smells available, the users will be able to choose a particular kind of smell and use it for their desired task like if they want to send a mail to their friends or relatives, they might choose the option of send mail and then select a particular smell or scent. This email on being received by the recipients on the other end will give out the smell and there will be some or the other kind of alterations created on the emotional state or the mood of the users.
The news feed of Face book contains the list of updates of status, messages and the photos that one opens face book. The people in face book were shown the content where the excess of happiness combined with the positive words which were shown the content has been analyzed as negative than average. However, when the expressions of the positivity are reduced, people tend to reduce their positive ideologies and start making more negative posts and vice versa. The research talks about the qualities of psychologies that have been suggested which are based on the correlation of the data or the social networks and also the expression of a person on face book and the emotional expressions attach to the users even after the days.
According Booth, (2014), more than 70,000 people were exposed to the emotional expressions out in the News Feed. This tests whether this is exposed to content of the emotional people which is maintaining its consistency with the exposures with the disease of emotions. When the person exposed to fewer emotional posts contained in the news feed is considered to be less expressive and it also addresses the questions about how the expression of emotions affects the social engagement on online. After the conduction of the survey, it can be said that the authors have finally confirmed that when face book manipulates the user’s timelines to reduce the expressions of the positive nature and also more negative posts. The users are being dependant on the words based on positivity and negativity which are based on the dictionary which is electronic in nature The study of the marketing further states that during the moments of vulnerability, media must concentrate on their content while linking with tricks and tips, being organized for the week and encourage the stories (Abreu et al 2014, p.110). The study of the face book focuses on the study of the marketing which states that the marketers are not needed to wait from Monday to Thursdays for the emotional impact, instead the companies of the social media can manipulate the news feeds or timelines to create opportunities for marketing based which is fuelled by emotions. The companies must tailor the way of marketing to women which are based on their appearances (Braun et al 2016, p.20). On a routine basis, face book adjusts the news feed of the users. According to face book, it has manipulated the news feed which is covering over half a million users to change the number of negative and positive posts that they witnessed. The company also claimed that the content of this kind of manipulation when they come to an agreement with the terms and services. But in the quick judgment, the argument was not universally accepted. However, face book is not the only social networking sites that manipulate the consumer data. Yahoo and Google also witness how the users interact with the search results or the articles to get adjusted. The Face book endeavours any types of direct feedbacks as well. Another new method that the social media companies are about to use is known as the digital scent technology which involves a large number of smells that can be customized and engineered within different files. The users will get this smells and will react accordingly. This technology is trying to see if this smells can be used to somehow alter the emotional state of the users. However, this scent technology is still in its stage of infancy and will take a lot of time to mature and play its proper role (Di Fuccio et al 2016, p.502).
The problem that may arise from engineering the usage of this scent technology is that this is perhaps the newest form of techno logy that is still in its infant stages and needs to go a very long way for getting properly developed. A very long and com placated process has to be used for properly constructing the framework of this technology (Zhao et al 2014, p.212).
Moreover, it is still not known how well this small technology will be adapted by the users; some users might not like the system of getting a smell as soon as they open any file, or music or images or any other programs Apart from this, many of the users might be allergic to any particular kind of smells or odors (Di Fuccio et al 2016, p.502).
As the experts have used all the natural elements like flowers, fruits, salt, water etc to design and engineer these smells, and these might be well suitable for all the users at the same time. Moreover, there will also the involve element of some or the other types of chemicals which might prove harmful to the users (Braun et al 2016, p.20). As this technology will directly affect the olfactory sense of the users, the designers have to be very much alert and adopt various safety measures. The entire procedure of installing and using this technology is also very expensive and it will use a principle based on VOCs. The working of the VOCs will be based on the usage of a special kind of sensor and some fluorescent dyes; the disadvantage of this dye is that it will soon be consumed by the sensing process.
The main aim or objective of this research will be to see how much does this new approach of digital smell or scent technology be able to influence and alter the emotional state or the mood of the users and even if it does change the emotional state of the users, is the change positive or negative. In other words, the aim is to see whether the effect of this scent or smell technology creates some feelings of positivity or pleasure or happy mood within their users or does it create some negative and sad mood (Sirotzke & Peterson 2015, p.160).
The research objectives can be stated as
How will XYZ Company use the digital scent technology to alter the emotional state of their users?
There are mainly four kinds of scale like –
Interval-It is the scale where one knows both the orders and the exact differences between the values as well. Ordinal scale-It is the order of value that is it says what is significant and important. Ratio is the ultimate scale that tells both about the order and the value between the units (Jadhav et al, 2016, p.160). Nominal is used for just labelling the variables. As far as this research is concerned, Ratio method can be used by the researchers to collect the data. This particular research is all about the different effects that this new scientific scent technology can have or is likely to have on its users (Cao & Okude 2015,p.180). Hence, this research approach must be largely based on the human emotions and human perceptions. The method that will be followed is that of interpretivism and the approach that can be used is that of qualitative and quantitative as well.
Qualitative method-This method will be useful for the researchers as they will be able to ask several open ended questions. This paper mainly deals with the usage of scent technology, which is a very new kind of a technology and is still to go a very long way. The outcome of this digital scent technology is still unknown that is whether it will be well accepted by the users or not and if it is accepted by the users, will it be able to alter their emotional state (Sirotzke & Peterson, 2015, p.160).
Quantitative method-This approach will highly be used in this research because the scent technology is a very new kind of a technology and is still a long way to go. Moreover, the results of this technology are still unknown. Hence, there has to be a thorough series of interviews both with the XYZ Company and with the users as well. This interviews will be done on face to face basis and also based on online or telephonic methods.
As the research paper is mainly aiming towards the implementation of a very new scientific technology which is yet at the very initial or the infant stage, the exploratory method followed by the descriptive or the analytical method will be used. Exploratory method, as the very man suggests will enable to explore the concept as the entire concept of using this digital smell or digital scent technology is very new and has not been used in plentiful amounts by any other company before always be the best as it will enable the company to get a detailed information about the usage of this new digital smell or digital scent technology (Althobaiti et al, 2015, p.181). Owing to the very new and complicated nature of this technology, it is also very vital for XZZ Company to first explore it and then gain detailed information and the likely impacts that the usage of this smell technology can have on the users. The Explanatory method is rejected in the first attempt because it is only when the concept of digital smell technology has been properly explored and detailed information has been gained about it, that new ideas, causes, and effects can be attempted to be explained by the researchers followed by the XYZ company.
Both the probability and the non probability sampling methods and techniques are to be used by the company. The simple random sampling method must be used because it is the method, where the data is collected based on the entire population without dividing them into any layers or groups or clusters. One of the advantages that the researcher and consequently the XYZ Company will be gaining out of the usage of this method is that this method will be enabling or allowing the users to use the statistical methods for analyzing the sample results. This particular method of sampling will be useful in connection with this particular field because there are existing previous statistical data related to such similar project (Jadhav et al, 2016, p.160). A good example can be that of the Face book Experiment where attempts were made to alter the emotional state or the mood of the users by tampering with the comments in the news feeds of the users. Similarly, this XYZ Company is now trying to undertake a new attempt of doing the same thing that is attempting to alter the emotional state of their users, just by using a different means that is not by tampering with the news feed comments but just by using the digital smell technology. Hence, this random sampling, the method will be beneficial to see and tally the number of users that will show a particular kind of reaction to this digital smell technology in comparison to the number of users who reacted to the tampering of the Face book news feed comments.
Both the qualitative and the quantitative methods are to be used. For the evaluation of the quantitative data, the numbers of users that will react are to be collected and transformed into percentages and expressed in terms of tables, charts, and graphs. Apart from that descriptive statistics have been used to calculate the mean, median, mode and the standard deviation of the findings.
To determine the qualitative data, one has to delve deep into the emotions and feelings of the users that are the human perceptions to be precise. The XYZ Company can use several methods like conducting interviews and surveys in order to get a data or an analysis of the qualitative approach.
Survey Questions
This research guideline has also kept in mind some of the very important ethical considerations also as has been demanded by the XYZ Company. According to the demands of the company, there must be strict check and consideration on the part of the ethics and no actions must go beyond or violate the ethical considerations. Some of the ethical considerations that are to be kept under strict check are as follows
Interviews and personal interactions and surveys are to be conducted both with the managers of the company and the users in order to analyze and tally the desired results. These interviews and surveys are to be conducted more than once and as many times as might be needed by the company to check and double check the results in order to see whether or not there are similarities in the results of both the processes.
The methods selected by the researcher are expected to give the desired results to XYZ Company and will enable them to carry the research method into real practice in a sound manner.
As the entire concept of introducing digital smell technology is very new the researcher found the allotted time to be a bit less than what was actually needed.
Conclusion
Thereby it can be concluded from this paper that the entire concept of digital smell technology is a very new and modern aspect and is expected to play a very important role in the near future if properly implemented. But at the same time, XZY Company needs to make sure that it takes into consideration all the ethical aspects are taken into proper consideration. Any study related to this topic will always hold certain impact. After the completion of the study, the researcher has forwarded the collected details so that the company can easily collect the required research data.
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