It’s well-known that all human behaviour – encompassing thoughts, feelings, and behaviours – is a by-product of neural activity in the brain. Using this factor as an advantage when it comes to marketing products to consumers and their responses is an upcoming feature. Simply put, neuromarketing is a field that studies neural activity concerning a stimulus to study consumer behaviour. A variety of neurological and physiological tools are used to gain insight into consumer decision-making processes.
So, in this section, we will learn what neuromarketing is, what neuromarketing means, how it can be used in market research, and where it stands in the future.
What Exactly Is Neuromarketing And How Does It Work?
While this field is still in its early stages, it is an emerging technology that has been used in a variety of ways. What does a consumer do when there is a flood of different brands falling into the same product category? What stimulus induces them to pick a specific brand over others? Consequently, it’s believed that a lot of the decisions made by them are done subconsciously. This is what the field of neuromarketing seeks to unfurl.
There are several tools used to conduct market research and neuromarketing helps in getting the information right from the subconscious. In neuromarketing, brain imaging techniques are used to study the brain activity of consumers when they are making a purchase. This helps understand which cognitive process in the brain and the area associated with it is activated and which remains dormant.
The common techniques that are used for neuromarketing are EEG and fMRI scans. These scans are involved in measuring human brain activity and functioning and help understand the cognitive functioning of an individual as well as the brain area that is associated with it. When it comes to neuromarketing, it can show which brain areas are activated when a specific brand stimulus is presented to the consumer and what their reaction is to it.
An FMRI, also known as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, studies the changes in the blood flow to an individual’s brain by using strong magnetic fields. An EEG, or electroencephalogram, tracks brain activity with the help of small sensors that are attached to the scalp by picking up the electrical signals that are produced by the brain. These imaging techniques can help highlight the cognitive and behavioural components of the brain when making product-related decisions.
How Is Neuromarketing Utilised In Market Research?
Neuromarketing techniques, while providing insightful results, can be a little complicated to inculcate into business practices. This is because there is not one specific answer and the validity of its precision can be questioned. However, neuromarketing as a technique is quite flexible and can answer a wide range of questions in market research. Different tools can be used to address different problems and in different contexts. There is not one used for this marketing technique, it can be used and applied in several ways. It’s often used in fields such as UX design testing, Ad testing, User Testing, A/B testing, rebranding, etc.
Factors such as what stimulus is being encoded into the long-term memory and which stimulus activates those areas of the brain that can foster an emotional response closely associated with a product or a service can be studied through these techniques. Here are some ways neuromarketing can be used in market research:
It helps optimise business strategies.
From studying eye movements to testing packaging strategies that appeal to the consumer, neuromarketing techniques can help in the domains of design, packaging, and advertising to optimise its establishment in the market. The colours that induce an emotional response, the packaging, and their association with the feelings of a consumer can all be studied accordingly.
Deeper Insight Into The Subconscious
As mentioned above, a lot of responses from a consumer come from the subconscious. Neuromarketing can help in uncovering these responses, especially those that a consumer may have simply forgotten and might be unknowingly retrieving when making buying decisions.
Better Insight
Traditional market research can only give as much information about a consumer’s behaviour. Neuromarketing can help look deeper into consumer behaviour with precision to form marketing strategies. For instance, how a product is displayed, whether it causes a customer to get overwhelmed or not, whether it is easy to help make buying choices, their feelings related to the product, etc. are some of the insights that can be uncovered.
Improved Product Marketing
Neuromarketing can be beneficial when coming up with marketing strategies for a product. For instance, which channel is more effective in evoking a response from the consumer? This helps form effective strategies that can be combined with traditional market research.
Is Neuromarketing Worth It?
While neuromarketing can have a lot of beneficial outcomes, there is still an air of criticism that follows around. Neuromarketing strategies are relatively expensive to implement and need specialised consultants and experts within the field to be utilised efficiently. The tools required for it are relatively costly, and investment needs to be made by the companies. It requires a lot of advanced technology, and many industries are still a step behind in that context. It’s also a fairly new arena that is widely being researched and studied, so it’s not very clear how effective neuromarketing is when it comes to implementing different techniques.
Some would say that it’s quite manipulative and might not be wholly accepted by many. While it claims to use scientific techniques, it still lacks credible research and evidence that can back up its claims. So, the waters of neuromarketing while having significant potential as an effective tool is still very uncanny and needs to be examined further before making any firm establishments.
Neuromarketing can be a great tool to use for product managers. You can learn more about product management and effective ways to use marketing strategies to enhance product launches. You can learn all the fundamentals through the introduction to Product Management and how to make a Career in Product Management at the online learning platform, Seekho.
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