Neuromarketing is the study of how people’s brains respond to advertising and other brand-related messages by scientifically monitoring brainwave activity, eye-tracking, and skin response. These neuromarketing techniques are used to study the brain to predict consumer decision-making behavior. It’s also possible to use neuromarketing to try to manipulate consumer behavior.
TOOLS AND MEASUREMENTS
In 2007, a team of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, and the MIT Sloan School of Management used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study what people’s brains do when they are making buying decisions. By using brain imaging to watch which neural circuits lit up or went dark during the buying process, researchers found they could predict whether a person would buy a product.
An FMRI tracks blood flow with continuous measurements. It is precise and a good tool for tracking activity deep in the subcortical regions of the brain.
An electroencephalogram (EEG) uses sensors placed on a subject’s scalp to track changes in brain activity. It is useful for tracking brain activity quickly, in fractions of a second. And while an EEG is less precise than an fMRI, it is generally less expensive.
EXAMPLES
- EYE-TRACKING: records where a person fixes their gaze for a certain amount of time.
- AROUSAL: is measured by specific physiological proxies and biometric data.
- FACIAL CODING: this involves reading the subtle muscle movements of a person’s facial expressions.
BENEFITS
Its benefits include granular insight, honest feedback, and cost-effectiveness whereas it is criticized on the basis that it is pseudoscience, manipulative, and no new information is derived through it which could not be otherwise gathered through intuition.
- Neuromarketing provides a more granular look at human behavior than traditional market research, which evaluates consumer behavior at a higher level using techniques such as surveys and focus groups. Neuromarketing strategies take a precise look at consumer behavior, preferences, and tendencies. They use data that is otherwise unquantifiable data to determine how a customer is feeling or how they might react. Neuromarketing can also provide moment-by-moment insights into customer behavior.
- Because customers cannot lie in a neuromarketing context, these methods generate more reliable data. Just asking a person how they feel about something can change their feelings. Neuromarketing bypasses this problem, generating objective results that a traditional customer satisfaction survey cannot provide.
- The approach can reveal insights into the subconscious mind, and short responses that people generally do not remember.
- Neuromarketing can lower the price and increase the value of marketing research.
- Neuromarketing is paired with traditional methods for a more holistic approach to marketing research.
LIMITATIONS
Anti-marketing activists, warn that neuromarketing could play on consumers’ fears to manipulate them or encourage specific neural responses to stimuli. Marketers insist that such precise manipulation is not possible or desirable. Neuromarketing is often conflated with pseudoscience and hype and is not backed by credible neuroscientific claims. Critics have dismissed it as a gimmicky way for marketers to gain insight into consumer opinion. Critics charge that neuromarketing uses science to explain in a more complex way what could be deduced using intuition. They say it simply validates things marketers already know about consumers.
