Today we will talk about NeuroMarketing. It is a fairly complicated concept. Complicated enough to make you close this window and never think about it again. “Leave it to the experts and marketers”, you would say. Well, I am here to make it simple for you. NeuroMarketing is a concept where marketers study the human brain’s responses to various elements and tailor a campaign to encourage people to take a specific action.
The key term in Neuromarketing that you all must remember is – Rational Choice Theory. Economists and some marketing experts dictate that we humans make rational decisions. The decisions are based on various externalities and information that we consider before making them like costs, benefits and event probabilities using the rational part of the brain. However, it is now known that decisions, especially decisions related to purchasing are a product of stimulus and our brain’s response when it interacts with elements to create a favourable response. To study the reaction and the inevitable outcome, marketers take help of consumer neuroscience.
According to the Harvard Business Review, “The field of neuromarketing—sometimes known as consumer neuroscience—studies the brain to predict and potentially even manipulate consumer behaviour and decision making.” Researchers in neuromarketing measure brainwaves and chemical changes in the brain to figure out physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers’ motivation, preferences, and decisions which can help inform creative advertising, product development, pricing, and other marketing areas.
Interest in consumer neuroscience took off in the mid-2000s when business school researchers started to demonstrate that advertising, branding, and other marketing tactics can have measurable impacts on the brain. In 2004 researchers at Emory University served Coca-Cola and Pepsi to subjects in an fMRI machine. When the drinks weren’t identified, the researchers noted a consistent neural response. But when subjects could see the brand, their limbic structures (brain areas associated with emotions, memories, and unconscious processing) showed enhanced activity, demonstrating that knowledge of the brand altered how the brain perceived the beverage. Despite such findings and its inevitable boost in overall sales, the adoption of neuromarketing has been low, which shines a light on the scepticism revolving the accuracy of brain scans and neural information synthesis.
Before you whirl into the land of scepticism, think about it; When I grab the ice cream at the grocery store, why do I choose Ben and Jerry’s over Haagen Dazs? I might tell myself it’s the specific flavour or the price or the packaging, or post-rationalise it in my brain in one of a million other ways. But for some reason, I instantly go for one over the other.
While people are good at expressing what they want, Neuroscience can help us understand the hidden elements of the decision process that creates a tool for us, to measure how customers perceive the value of the offering, and how and when does it influence the customer through its displays and brand to make the final decision.
Sumeru Marketing is at the forefront of this revolutionary concept. Each of our campaigns and displays are made with the right elements, to maximise the effectiveness, using heat maps from neuroscience.
