Dominant meanings of facial emoji: Insights from Chinese consumers and comparison with meanings from internet resources

Emoji are increasingly popular in computer-mediated communications, and people often use them spontaneously. This indicates a potential to harness emoji for use in consumer research. However, little is known about how consumers interpret emoji and what meanings are associated to different emoji. In a study of 33 facial emoji, conducted with Chinese consumers (n = 1084), the present research begins to close this knowledge gap. Data were collected in an online survey that asked participants to select words they perceived as being applicable for describing the emotional meaning of the emoji (CATA question with 39 terms). The studied emoji spanned a broad range of emotions, which varied in valence (e.g., smiling face vs. angry face) and arousal (e.g., sleepy face and face with stuck out tongue and winking eye). A strong association with one emotion/mood was established for 15 emoji, and associations of lesser strength with several but related emotions/moods was established for 10 emoji. The remaining emoji (n = 8) were associated with different moods and emotions, indicating multiple and unrelated meanings. Emoji with similar facial expression had largely similar meanings (e.g., neutral face and expressionless face; and the different smiling face emoji). For most emoji, consumers' interpretations corresponded to meanings listed in internet resources, and there was also concordance between the empirical results and the internet meanings with regard to multiple words being applicable to describing every emoji. Validation of the established meanings is required, and in the future consideration should be given to agreement/disagreement among consumers in emoji meaning. Extension of the research to other consumer populations and emoji is needed.