Brain mapping to set the rule

Have you ever come across a situation, wherein you planned to buy a pair of your favourite Levi’s jeans but when you visited the store you ended up buying an unknown brand. Ever wondered what prompted you to do so? Probably the product’s uniqueness, its price or may be just the last mile communication. But the point is that whatever you did was spontaneous and the surrounding played a major role in the whole process. You might have hardly realised that behind this simple purchasing exercise of yours was a very complex marketing strategy known as Neuromarketing.

What is neuromarketing

Neuromarketing is a practice to measure brain activity of consumers. The basis of this marketing strategy is that consumer buying decisions are made in nano seconds in the subconscious, emotional part of the brain. As indicated by our brain’s reactions to brand stimulation, marketers can design products and communications to better meet, unmet market needs to connect and drive the sale.

How neuromarketing works

It is believed that customary market research is inconsistent because consumers don’t know, can’t articulate, or will even lie in a focus group about their purchase inspiration. Neuromarketing research removes ambiguity by going right to measure visible brain behaviuor. Respondent attention level, emotional engagement and memory storage are common metrics used in neuromarketing.

Marketing analysts can use neuromarketing to have a better idea about consumer’s preference, as the oral response given to the question; “Do you like this product?” may not always be the true answer due to cognitive (process of thought) bias. This knowledge can help marketers create products and services designed more effectively and marketing campaigns focused more on the brain’s retorts. This makes neuromarketing and its applied results latently potent.

“It’s a fact that around 50 per cent of sales at retail store are unplanned or impulse purchase. Ultimately, there are two reasons, why customers buy, the product and the price. So impulse buying is induced either by an exceptional product, which can be aided by attractive display and interesting description or an attractive price discounting or price offer,” says Mridumesh Rai, GM Operations, Globus.

Neuromarketing helps in telling the marketer what a consumer reacts to, whether it is the sound that the box makes when shaken, color of the packaging or the idea that they will have something their co-buyers do not have.

Techniques used for neuromarketing

Neuromarketing is a complex mechanism and requires certain level of scientific brain analysis tests. This is the reason that makes neuromarketing cumbersome and retailers and market analysts shy away from this otherwise viable marketing tool.

There are two main kinds of brain mapping test that are done by market analysts to know about the brand preference of the customers. FMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), which measures changes in activity in parts of the brain and EEG (Electroencephalography) that measures activity in specific regional spectra of the brain response, and/or sensors to measure changes in one’s physiological state (heart rate, respiratory rate, galvanic skin response) to learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it.

Flaws in neuromarketing

The practice of neuromarketing is not without its flaws and criticism. Neuromarketing still faces the issue it is trying to overcome, the cumbersome nature of its market research. Brain activity in a lab cannot be compared to brain behaviour in the mall, where the buying decisions actually take place. Also, neuromarketing studies aren’t common in the B2B arena, perhaps because the customer buying process tends to be lengthy and involves many people so it may be difficult to measure the reliability of these decisions.

Neuromarketing is poised to grow in use and influence. But as the practice makes its way out of the lab and into the real world, at the grocery aisle, onto your computer perhaps, a debate that is beyond marketing can be initiated.