Insights from Neuro for consumer marketing

What can’t speak, cannot lie.

In conventional research people tell researchers what they want to hear. We are after all social creatures. Neuro offers insight into the unconscious working of the brain and how choices are made. Especially the value that comes from Brands, Store displays, etc. Our brains are hardwired for reward or pain, and understanding the pleasure centre can help marketers promote their products.

1.     fMRI and PET scanning allows for scanning of the brain. It is a tell tale method of the brain of a consumer while making a choice. It consumes oxygen from the blood at certain regions which gets picked up on the scanner, and by contrasting with dissimilar images it can show which part of the brain gets activated.

2.     The Response to a Product, the Price and making a purchase Choice are located at different regions of the brain.

The infamous “Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola” experiment, in which scientists studied the motivation behind brand preferences, was what first put early neuromarketing in the spotlight.

The researchers observed that although Pepsi and Coke are essentially identical, people often favor one over the other. They subsequently sought to investigate how cultural

messages work to guide our perception of products as simple as everyday beverages.

The experiment was simple: there were two taste tests—one blind and one in which subjects knew which beverage was which—and the researchers observed the corresponding

brain activity. When volunteers were unaware of which brand they were drinking, the fMRI showed activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a basic “reward center,”when they drank Pepsi. However, when the subjects knew which soda was which, the scans showed brain activity in the hippocampus, midbrain, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (which are centers for memory and emotion), in favor of Coke. So essentially, people actually liked the taste of Pepsi,but they were more inclined to believe that they preferred Coke, based off of nostalgia  and emotional connections. From these results, the researchers determined that “a preference for Coke is more influenced by the brand image than by the taste itself”.

3.     Eye movement studied of a consumer in a store, is influenced by earlier triggers like advertisements.

4.     A risk inviting a choice, is influenced by the Positive or Negative tone of the message (example – a new experimental surgery has a 25% success rate, versus it fails 75% of times).

5.     The choice one makes is evident prior to expressing the choice: the unconscious choice is first made and the it becomes conscious.

The researchers, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, told participants in the study that they could freely decide if they wanted to press a button with their left or right handscan whenever they wanted, but they had to remember at which time they felt they had made up their mind. They found that it was possible to predict from their brain signals which option they would choose seven seconds before they consciously made their decision.

The study of neuro marketing is presents ethical issues: when understanding it, it can be the force of good, yet it can be subversive  to gain ‘control’, aka quite similar to the debate around the study of genome.

Imagine you see Angelina biting on an apple, with the juice flowing across her lips. Then up comes the apple macbook: bingo!  For years, consumers have been manipulated and the trajectory began I guess with the discovery of Freud, that man has repressed desires