You turn on the television and watch an emotional insurance advertisement. Minutes later, you’re looking up insurance packages online. You drive to your nearest grocer and get a “buy one, free one” of a dish set you never really needed.
There has been so much discussion about neuromarketing in the field of science and its incorporation into business. Is it legal? Is it deceptive? Are consumers getting taken advantage of by science?
In this article, we will discuss everything about neuromarketing. Its definition, issues, use cases, types, techniques, and how marketers can leverage neuromarketing to build a successful marketing strategy.
What is neuromarketing?
Diving into your customer’s brains, studying their behavior, and taking advantage of it may be a scary way to define neuromarketing easily, but it does what it does.
Neuromarketing, strictly defined, incorporates neuroscience into marketing and business, studying the human brain and behavior to interpret, predict, and manipulate consumer purchase behavior and consumption through various marketing techniques.
This term was first coined by Professor Ale Smidts in 2002, despite various industries already employing neuroscience techniques in their marketing efforts before then.
Neuromarketing, also known as consumer neuroscience, is expected to reach a $21,218 million market size by 2030, from $2,493 million in 2021, according to Straits Research. This fast-growing field is overtaking traditional marketing methods in the Retail and Consumer Brands industry, primarily because of the rise of digital marketing and digitalization over the past decade.
Issues surrounding neuromarketing
Despite the potential of neuromarketing, using these techniques comes with legal and ethical issues that have been discussed over the years.
Data security
Neuromarketing uses participant data through eyeball tracking, MRI scans, EEG, skin tests, facial scans, etc. Nick Esposito, Founder at NYCServers, shares, “This raises an issue on how these data are stored, maintained, and protected, especially with increased global vigilance on data protection. With rampant data theft and digital breaches happening in the blink of an eye, these sensitive data are most likely to be used inappropriately and illegally.”
Ethical considerations
Another critical concern about data gathered from neuromarketing is whether these data are used ethically. While neuromarketing businesses would never explicitly say anything against their services, the question lies here:
Does neuromarketing really help understand consumer behavior? Or is it just another false marketing scheme from proclaimed ‘researchers’ trying to fool businesses into believing they can influence consumers to mass buy their products through a brain study?
What are neuromarketing techniques?
A piece from Harvard Business Review summarized several neuromarketing techniques and tools that utilize science and brain-scanning technology to reveal how consumers would feel or think and the steps businesses can employ to take advantage of such results:
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Functional MRI is considered the most expensive neuroscience test of all the tools. During an fMRI, researchers examine blood flow to the brain. Basically, when a part of the brain is used, blood flow increases to that region, signaling to researchers which part of the brain is most active and responsive to specific tests. Of all neuromarketing toos, fMRI is considered the standard in detecting detailed emotional responses.
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
EEG is an expensive and invasive method of recording electro signals in the scalp to record electrical activity in the brain. These electrical signals from the neurons in the brain help understand consumer preference and decision-making abilities to purchase a product or not, as with this study from the National Library of Medicine.
Eye (gaze) tracking and pupillometry
Gaze tracking and pupillometry deal with eye behavior in determining a subject’s recognition, attention, and level of engagement with specific tests. Researchers study the direction a subject’s gaze is looking towards and if the pupils become dilated to specific tests to identify what catches their attention the most.
Galvanic skin response (GSR)
GSR is a method wherein researchers measure skin conductance to test a subject’s arousal (whether positive or negative) and emotional reactions to stimuli through changes in sweat gland activity. Rather than the type of emotion, GSR measures the intensity of it.
Facial coding
Facial coding examines a subject’s facial responses to stimuli—be it happiness, delight, fear, excitement, etc.
How to use neuromarketing in your marketing efforts
Through the various tools researchers make for businesses to identify, predict, and test consumer behavior and responses, here are some tips on how neuromarketing can help you build a successful marketing strategy and attract new customers:
Branding
Deciding whether to retain or improve your branding is an essential use-case of neuromarketing for businesses. When consumers think about a brand, a significant image comes into mind associated with that brand.
Neuromarketing delves into the detailed emotional response and familiarity a consumer gets about a brand, whether or not that brand is worth spending a hefty amount of money for if the brand is recently involved in a scandal that jeopardizes its reputation, and other recall and engagement factors that affects a consumer’s purchasing decisions.
Advertising
Michael Melen, Co-Founder at SmartSites, says, “With the help of EEG, eye-tracking, biometrics, and facial coding, researchers can determine what kind of advertisements or online promotion strategies generate positive or negative responses from a test subject, the level of engagement, and emotional response.”
With this data, marketers can round up several ideas to improve advertisement materials. Some advertisement ideas that neuromarketing identifies as effective materials are:
- Tapping into a person’s emotions
- Incorporate relatability
- Use testimonials
The idea behind neuromarketing and effective advertisements is that they need to be memorable and make consumers take action after watching the ad.
Website design
A good website design works hand in hand with effective brand marketing. It triggers consumers’ senses and gives them a first impression of your business and your brand.
Not only does a good website design need to be pleasing to the eyes. Your website also needs to seamlessly guide your visitors into the sales funnel and make a purchase. As such, a good website design needs to be:
- Visually pleasing
- Gives a great user experience
- Easy to navigate
- Good page loading speed
- Safe and secure website (uses an SSL connection)
All these features work hand in hand with your website structure to grab the attention of your visitors and increase their engagement on your page.
Product packaging
How often does a consumer reach out for a product simply because of its packaging? It’s more than you can imagine.
Product packaging is also a form of advertising. Thus, just like online and TV advertisements, product packaging needs to be ‘memorable’ whether it be because of its simple and sleek design or an over-the-top, eye-catching packaging.
Physical attributes aside, a part of product packaging that entices consumers to buy a particular product is its claims in terms of production, environment, and negative and positive attributes.
For example, when a product claims to be ‘packaged with recyclable materials,’ environmentalists would gear towards purchasing it over its competitors. In neuromarketing, this triggered the emotional responses of an environmentalist to the causes they fight for.
Setting prices
Researchers use neuromarketing techniques like fMRI and EEG to help businesses set product prices to maximize revenue by studying a test subject’s willingness to pay for their product or service.
This happens by presenting multiple price points to the subjects and identifying which price points triggered the most positive response under time pressure to reduce thinking time, such as consideration about cost or affordability.
The future of neuromarketing
The brain is a complex structure that processes thousands, if not millions, of responses every second. Studying the brain and how it responds to stimuli and using it to develop effective marketing strategies for businesses has generated buzz—good and bad—over the years.
Despite its potential exponential growth predicted in the coming year, neuromarketing will only be as effective as businesses’ measures to incorporate the study results into their marketing efforts.
