A method of assessing consumer reaction to a marketing stimulus, involving the steps of (a) exposing a sample population to a marketing stimulus for a period of time, (b) interviewing members of the sample population immediately after exposure of the members to the marketing stimulus, (c) videotaping any facial expressions and associated verbal comments of individual members of the sample population during the exposure period and interview, (d) reviewing the videotaped facial expressions and associated verbal comments of individual members of the sample population to (1) detect the occurrence of action units, (2) detect the occurrence of a smile, (3) categorize any detected smile as duchenne or social smile, (4) detect the occurrence of any verbal comment associated with a detected smile, and (5) categorize any associated verbal comment as positive, neutral or negative, (e) coding a single action unit or combination of action units to a coded unit, (f) associating coded units with any contemporaneously detected smile, (g) translating the coded unit to a scored unit, (h) tallying the scored unit by scoring unit category, (i) repeating steps (d) through (h) throughout the exposure period, (j) repeating steps (d) through (h) for a plurality of the members of the sample population, (k) calculating an impact value for each scoring unit category by multiplying the tallied number of scored units for each scoring unit category by a predetermined impact factor for that scoring unit category, (l) calculating an appeal value for each scoring unit category by multiplying the tallied number of scored units for each scoring unit category by a predetermined appeal factor for that scoring unit category, (m) combining the impact values obtained for each scoring unit category to obtain an impact score, (n) combining the appeal values obtained for each scoring unit category to obtain an appeal score, and (o) representing the appeal and impact scores with an identification of the corresponding marketing stimulus to which the members were exposed.