Introduction to neuromarketing and consumer science
Introduction
Introduction to neuromarketing and consumer science is an emerging book for future passionate in the scientific field of consumer science. If in the past, studying the brain and consumer could have been done only in an artificial environment like a lab, now we have at our disposal so many tools to move the studies into the real world. It is possible to make use of eye-tracking, brain responses and facial expressions to dive into their unconscious self, cause, as it is later described in the book, even if the customers try to explain their decisions, they can’t touch the unconscious factor that drives the behavior.
For the moment as we speak, neuromarketing is just emerging in this field of advertising and business, and just recently it is given sufficient credibility, validation and reliability.
Summary
The book covers many aspects of the neuro sector, such as the anatomy of the brain and the full toolbox to assess research on consumers, which I will not detail here as I don’t want to overwhelm you. However, I will detail the insights from the senses we have and I’ll put some personal note to them.
Let’s begin with…
Senses and perception
Each of our senses has a unique way of translating the world we interact with into the world we perceive it to be. What we think we know about it it’s not the actual reality, as each organism has evolved to interpret the world in the most favorable way for its survival. Let’s get to analyze the senses that we have.
Seeing
We will firstly start with our vision, as it’s by far the most dominant sense that we have. It has the biggest role in our orientation and it occupies the biggest part of our brain for a sensory system. As it processes a lot of information, vision must be selective. You can’t focus on all your 200 degree visual area that you have at the same time. You can only 2 degrees at a time. The rest of the visual spectrum is specialized to recognize movement and contrast ( so you can react quickly if a predator prepares to attack you from behind ).
It’s important to note that the eye has different ways of receiving information about the world. In another order, color, contrast, movement and other features are processed independently and are then sending their specialized information to the same region of the brain. The temporal cortex.
To put this into practice, companies use outdoor advertisements with high contrast and bold messages because they know they will distract you and whether you like it or not, you will perceive them and recognize them.
Next, the temporal cortex has the role of visual cognition. It helps you as a consumer to make a distinction between what, how, and where.
These are applied in the communication strategy of a brand. For example, brands are often connected to the what stream, as most of us know for example what Coca-Cola is. Coke’s product, however, has a product that is highly specific with regard to HOW (drink it), but also WHERE (positioning in-store, where the store is, etc)
To apply this info, I will use it as an additional reference to the book:
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
There, it was specified the importance of narrowing your brand on just one product or concept. Based on the two books, if you are very specific, then the consumers will have an easy job to relate to your brand and know how you position on the market.
Hearing
Hearing is for sure different than vision. Even though vision play the most important role in orientation, think about how you can be able to remember lots of songs word by word, whereas for a photo it’s a really hard task if not impossible to know by heart all the details. Hearing is not that selective.
Hearing has a more subtle influence over the consumers, and there is a whole science about it. People even do masters in sound design, as most well-known brands are associated with a very specific sound. Think of the sound of Pringles, which is unique from all other chips based on its shape. Also, the sound of a Mercedes will always be different compared with a Dacia.
One very interesting example given in the book is the following. Based on research, in stores, music influence the purchase decision. As an example, in a wine shop, usually, if there is French music, then the French wine will be bought more, just as german music increases the likelihood for german wine to be bought, and classical music makes people buy more expensive wine.
Smelling and tasting
You might wonder why are those two put together.
The answer is simple.
Smelling and tasting are processed in the same region of the brain, to offer us a full flavor. Basically, when you eat, you are in fact experiencing a conjoint process: you are tasting AND smelling at the same time. As a result, the flavor we are experiencing enriches our perception and has a powerful influence over our emotions and memory as the specific brain region has a direct route to emotions, compared to vision.
Subtle and pleasant odors influence our feelings regarding a brand when we interact with it, and it can improve learning (as for example, when you are first shown a product, its smell and the odour of the environment increases your probability to remember that product/brand)
Body sense
The way we feel a product influences our perception of it.
Fast example: you take 2 remotes: One is light, the other one is heavy.
Which one would you describe to have higher quality?
The one that is more heavily! Even though both of them as just as performant, the weight and materials of it make you prone to spend more.
Based on this example, I understand better how can research can play a role in product design. Based on the example mentioned above, if the companies wouldn’t test and make consistent research on consumers, they might end up with a functional and even useful product that is yet perceived as being of low quality.
Senses emerge!
I have an important note to take here: All these senses emerge in the brain and are closely linked to hedonic experiences.
Brands that are really powerful on us have the ability to include as many senses as possible. Wine is a very famous example to show that. It has color, smell, taste, touch (the glass), and sound (when you knock with another glass).
Long story short of this chapter? A company’s ability to combine several senses simultaneously is indeed related to the success of that company in building a strong brand, or brand equity.
Attention and perception
Everybody wants our attention!
There is this constant war of advertising where everybody wants badly to make us remember them and put us in the action. So many stimuli!
In fact, we are exposed to an estimated 11 million bits of information each second through all our senses! Yet, we as humans are claimed to only be capable of processing only around 50 bits of that information
This is a result of our brain strategy to improve our efficiency of living in this world.
Because of that, there are two main mechanisms for perceiving this information. We can either record it consciously or unconsciously. Both of them are as important and effective.
Actually, when we talk about advertising, it’s better to be unconscious when you are exposed to them due to the natural defenses that appear. Being subliminally exposed to stimuli makes us rate these stimuli as more likable, a phenomenon known as the mere exposure effect.
Consciously perceived information, on the other hand, enables a much stronger effect on flexible and creative behaviors. As a consequence, stimuli that reach consciousness are more likely to affect behaviors relevant to consumer decisions, including memory, preference, and decision-making.
And put into business, it's important to have constant exposure so we can be unconsciously in our customer's minds. Yet, how do we grab their attention when we want them to?
One way to do that is to make the advertisements salient. Lower the complexity of an image, put focus just on the main element, increase brightness, contrast, use guerilla strategies and include multiple sensory stimuli.
Emotions & Feelings
Emotions have a crucial role in our decisions. They operate as shortcuts to our choices, being influential enough to make us act without any conscious processing. Emotions origin from the Latin word “emovere” which closely means to move. The stronger an emotion is, the most probable is for you to act.
Yet, as we have already known, our brains are still adapted for the savanna world, full of predators where food was scarce. So are our emotional responses. We don’t have a financial strategy region, nor a “shopper brain center”. To deal with our new reality, consumer choices depend on the regions sorely on those regions evolved on primitive situations to keep us alive. Based on that, every time we might think that our emotions are stupid, we have to think that actually they are the only responses we have available.
What we can use however is that we can get attached to things, including brands. If a brand is able to make a connection with the customer, to give him certain experiences and feeling, to push one of the hot buttons that trigger actions (reference to the book “hot button marketing”), then the customer will be motivated enough to act upon you. To buy your products or services.
Learning and memory
Let’s start by stating that not all memories are created equal, and memories can range from the inborn and instinctual to the full emotional and consciously acquired. Furthermore, there are no such unique structures for keeping memories, as it is a complex process with different delimitations.
Let’s start with memory categories that are dependent on time:
Sensory memory — with a duration of just a few milliseconds to a second, sensory memory helps you “remember”, or better put in words, acknowledge that you might have just heard something or spot a light. Otherwise, even though your vision or hearing are perfectly functioning, if this type of memory is not working, your brain will go blank about it. It will not record it.
The next type of memory is working memory — with a length of just a few seconds, working memory helps you remember a sequence of words or numbers. Following the order, intermediate memory has a duration from a few seconds to minutes and helps you remember as for example the line of thoughts you’ve had minutes ago. Lastly, there is long term memory, which starts from a few hours to even years, and has the role to keep a coherent order of events in your mind and to learn.
Another criteria for organizing the type of memories is by the possibility to declare them.
What do I mean by this is that declarative memories are those that you can explicitly state that you know something, like from events or facts. Non-declarative memories are those that you are not aware of, like skills, priming effects (the preference you might have for a specific brand, even though you don’t know why), reflexes, muscle memory, and so on.
CHAPTER EIGHT: Wanting, liking and deciding.
In this chapter is explained that wanting and liking are one thing, and the unconscious process of actions is really different from conscious reflection. A customer might say he likes something, yet would act differently. When we speak of motivation, as with emotions and feelings, we must expect that our choices are not driven by a single, linear and consciously controlled system.
Taking this into consideration, if customer choice is not conscious, and conscious introspection cannot reveal the root causes of consumer choice, where does this leave us when it comes to making ads or any kind of communication to consumers?
Well, the book doesn’t clearly answer to this.
I would say that for research companies, using both assessment methods would provide much insight.
However, I would recommend also taking the insights from the book: “Hot button marketing” which give further details into how to “push” the emotional buttons of customers.
Personal note:
I have two views on this book.
From one point of view, it goes into scientific details, even detailing some brain functions based on medical case studies.
From another perspective, it gives just brief details about the applicability of the information. This implies that if the reader would like to use the information right after reading the book, it would not be suitable.
However, the book is not meant for that, as it helps passionates to understand better the field. As a common reader, if you want just a way to apply insights into business, then this book might not be the right choice. But if you are driven to understand how our brain works and you want to see how some processes are correlated with decision-making factors, then it’s for sure totally worth it!
Endnote:
In the near future, thanks to the further advances in this domain, we see that research on consumer preference and behavior is at the tipping point of becoming highly available, scalable, and valid.
For the moment, neuromarketing has already brought incredible insights into consumer’s minds, and there are raised even ethical concerns at conferences and events for the consumer’s autonomy and freedom. It’s most likely that there will be some regulations regarding the way we can make neuromarketing research, yet we still have to learn a lot more about consumer behavior and the medical application of the results.
