Encashing on the Consumer's Subconscious: Neuromarketing

An MRI Machine in the right corner, with 6 people in a queue beside it, an eye tracker in the center of the room and a Computer Electroencephalograph (EEG) on the left with a group of 3 scientists busy analyzing neural activity graphs on the screen. The scene at a medical clinic, right? Wrong. Welcome to the 'Marketing Lab'. Those of us who still think of marketing as a function that solely involves a group of high-profile executives planning strategies for target customers in a board-room need to awaken to this rather recent trend of studying a consumer's sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli, also termed as 'Neuromarketing'.

André Marquis, Senior Vice President , Sales and Marketing at Innerscope Research discusses in his talk “If It Feels Good Do It” : Using Neuromarketing to Go Beyond that we use less than 10% of our cognitive brain in normal decision-making. This implies that most our decisions, especially those like purchasing of products, are made at a subconscious level. Today, several large firms like Google, Disney, Frito-Lay and CBS, as well as political campaigners, are using neuroscience to study human behavior for effective marketing techniques. Advertisements are designed to have more emotional engagement, in order to increase the probability that consumers will remember the products after seeing them. Also, it has been found that the graphics of an advertisement or a packaging cover can play an important role in increasing its appeal. Something as trivial as a product logo can give one product a competitive advantage over the other.

Neuromarketing firms, like EmSense, Sands Research, MindLab International and NeuroSense use biometric measurements including eye tracking, heart rate, breathing, GSR and movement to understand consumer reactions to visual information. Dr. David Lewis, who has been called the ‘father of neuromarketing’ for this research in this field, is the Chairman and Director of Research for MindLab International Ltd. The company uses a comprehensive range of technologies for measuring brain activity, muscle activity, eye tracking and stress and emotional indicators.

That said, a major question that arises is whether or not neuromarketing can be a means to trick consumers into buying what they did not intend to, i.e., how ethical is it to use brain mapping for selling products in the market. Since neuromarketing operates at the subconsious level, obviously the consumers are not aware of its influence on their decisions. Protectionist organizations have voiced their concerns regarding the use of this technology. Commercial Alert, wrote letters to members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation way back in 2004 requesting an investigation of neuromarketing.

In my opinion, now that the technology is already is use, banning it or abolishing its use altogether is rather impractical. More so, because it does not seem to have direct ill-effects on people in general. However, like other technologies that have brought up questions regarding the morality of their use, for instance radioactivity and nanotechnology, it is required that the government regulates the use of neuromarketing to clearly define the boundaries within which companies might operate. It is important to address privacy-related concerns at this time, when the technology is still in its initial phase of use. There lies tremendous scope in the scale of use of neuromarketing and it would be interesting to see the unfolding of its hype cycle.

Looking forward,
Latika

Sources: Dr. David Lewis, NY times, Google TechTalk