Have you ever wondered why candy, sweets and other small “unnecessary” products are always next to supermarket counters? The answer is simple and can be summed up in a single word: neuromarketing.
Neuromarketing is the science that has led supermarket owners to realise that consumers are more inclined to spend small amounts of money on unnecessary products after filling their shopping cart with more expensive and basic necessities.
Basically, thanks to neuromarketing we have a scientific explanation of why spending 1 euro on sweets is easier after knowing that the products that are already in our trolley are going to cost more.
But neuromarketing can be applied in many other areas, not only supermarkets, and it can improve the performance of any business, online and offline.
In this article you will find out exactly what neuromarketing is, how it works and discover the best techniques you can implement for your business, with easy and practical examples.
Neuromarketing is a science born from different branches of marketing and psychology, and analyses people's behaviour during the purchasing process, from the first touchpoint to the final purchase.
This is because it has been found that the consumer does not make purchasing decisions based only on rational processes such as the quality/price ratio or the advantages and disadvantages of a particular product or service.
On the contrary, people are deeply influenced by irrational, emotional factors, of which they are very often unaware.
Neuromarketing measures those exact unconscious processes that take place in consumers’ minds, and which lead them to make certain decisions.
This measurement is acquired by analysing an individual’s physiological reaction when exposed to various forms of stimuli, thus testing the effectiveness of marketing strategies that aim to involve and convert the consumer.
To do this, neuromarketing employs advanced technologies that collect information on all those psychological, emotional, and irrational processes that traditional surveys or interviews wouldn’t be able to measure.
Neuromarketing analyses psychophysiological variations such as eye-tracking, skin conductance, heart rate, facial expressions, as well as the encephalogram of consumers to draw conclusions and allow companies to make informed decisions on their marketing strategies based on scientific data.
The term neuromarketing began to appear around 2002 with the research of Ale Smidts, professor of Marketing Research at the Rotterdam School of Management. Since then, the first US organisations have begun to offer consulting and research-based neuromarketing services by combining the technology at their disposal with cognitive neuroscience.
The first neuromarketing research, initiated in 2003 and published in 2004, was conducted by Read Montague, neuroscience professor at Baylor College of Medicine.
The research consisted in giving a group of people Pepsi or Coca-Cola, while analysing their brain’s reactions with the functional magnetic resonance technique, which allowed them to visualise the hemodynamic response related to the neuronal activity of the brain.
In short, it is a technique that made them visualise which areas of the brain "lit up" in reaction to certain stimuli.
The findings of this study revealed that when individuals were unaware of the brand difference, distinct areas of their brain were activated (lit up).
So, when consumers didn't know which drink it was, they preferred Pepsi. While, when they were shown product packaging, most showed a preference for Coca-Cola.
As a result, it became clear that a brand with a strong presence and influence like Coca-Cola could capture an area of the frontal cortex of the consumers' brain.
No data on the logic behind these findings was published at the time, and the research was also subject to several criticisms. However, it paved the way for all the following neuromarketing research that led to the knowledge we have of it today.
This knowledge is what brought to the neuromarketing techniques that you can implement to optimise the communication and promotional efforts of your business.
Now, let's find out more about the most effective neuromarketing techniques.
Neuromarketing is made up of a myriad of theories and strategies, some more easily applicable than others. Here you will find the top 5 neuromarketing techniques that you can immediately start testing for your business:
Neuromarketing can guide the consumer's gaze both online and offline.
For example, think about how mannequins in brick-and-mortar stores are positioned to point to specific products, or to guide customers' gaze towards an item for sale.
The hands and face of the mannequins are often used to direct the gaze towards some products, perhaps those that have recently been released or on discount, so that customers notice them without realising the process that brought them to that point.
Similarly, in promotional images, the eyes and hands of testimonials are strategically employed to direct the viewer’s attention toward a key message or featured product.
In this example, thanks to eye-tracking technology (which we'll discuss shortly), it becomes evident that a fixed gaze acts as a magnet for the viewer, who ends up concentrating on it while almost completely ignoring the product.
Thanks to neuromarketing, we now know that this advertisement would have been much more effective if the testimonial's gaze had been directed towards the product, rather than towards the consumer.
Sight is one of the most "targeted" senses by neuromarketing, because it can be stimulated in different ways.
For example, selecting the appropriate font for texts – in digital or print formats - is extremely important if you desire to trigger an involuntary emotional reaction in the consumer.
An American candy brand should choose a playful and colourful font, while a law firm should opt for a minimal and elegant font.
The same goes for product packaging. There is no single rule to create effective packaging, it all depends on the sensation you want your customers to feel.
For example, Tiffany's packaging makes the brand instantly recognizable, as it conveys all the values that consumers associate with the brand through a single, distinctive colour.
Smell is also a sense capable of stimulating consumers involuntarily, pushing them to certain behaviours.
An example is the sensory campaign conducted by Dunkin' Donuts in 2012 that was based on the unique scent of its products.
In Seoul, Dunkin' Donuts had air fresheners programmed to activate and spread the smell of its coffee only when the brand's commercial played on the radio.
It goes without saying, the bus ended right in front of a Dunkin' Donuts shop, so that people who got off the bus, smelling the coffee again, were immediately inclined to stop for a quick coffee.
A somatic marker refers to the pleasant or unpleasant sensation we experience when contemplating a positive or negative outcome of a particular decision.
In neuromarketing, somatic markers can impact the effectiveness of an advertising message, enabling it to trigger the right emotion that guides the consumer towards making a purchase.
For example, Orange, a US telecommunications company, offered all San Francisco students the opportunity to paint their cars for free, as long as the paint colour was orange.
The hilarity of the gimmick, combined with the originality of the campaign, meant that thousands of orange cars suddenly appeared around the city, thus creating a somatic marker.
Eye tracking is a neuromarketing tactic that allows you to understand where consumers focus their attention when they are in front of a product, advertisement, or a website.
It can be used not only to determine whether a site is user friendly or not, but also to analyse the emotional involvement of those who browse those pages.
For example, if pupil dilation is recorded, users are reacting positively to what they see. If they fixate on a particular detail, it means that it is what struck them the most. If they blink often, it means that they are in a state of agitation, and so on.
Before neuromarketing, this type of information could only be obtained by interviewing individuals exposed to those advertisements or websites, but the answers were not 100% reliable.
It’s not that the people were insincere, but rather that the majority of these reactions occur on an unconscious level. As a result, those directly involved might not have been able to record these responses consciously, only memorising the general feeling experienced during the event.
In this sense, techniques such as the analysis of facial expressions, skin conductance (which indicates the amount of sweat produced by our body) or heartbeat analysis can also be essential for optimising your communication efforts thanks to neuromarketing.
Neuromarketing has several applications, including:
These are just some examples of how neuromarketing can be applied. Basically, the more you study neuromarketing, the more you discover new ways in which its theories and findings become crucial to the success of a company.
The ability of understanding the minds of consumers to increase sales and improve their promotional efforts is inevitably attractive. Fortunately, the resources at our disposal to study and expand our understanding of this topic are infinite.
Here are the 10 books that you really can't miss if you want to learn more about neuromarketing:
In conclusion, the goal of neuromarketing is to get people to do or buy certain things, using the mechanisms of the human mind as the main lever.
Consumers are constantly bombarded with information, advertising messages and incentives to purchase products and services of any type, and in most cases, even when one has the impression of making a rational choice, the emotional component always plays an important role.
Understanding and using neuromarketing to optimise your business promotion strategies will therefore help you to increase your conversion rate and revenue, while offering your customers an excellent shopping experience, without making them realise you are “playing” with their mind.
Here you will find answers to the most frequently asked questions about neuromarketing.
Neuromarketing is a discipline that studies the functioning of the human mind with the aim of predicting and influencing the behaviour and the process that leads consumers to make a purchasing decision.
Among the main neuromarketing techniques we find eye-tracking, electroencephalogram, functional magnetic resonance, galvanic skin response, electrocardiogram, and recognition of facial expressions.
Anyone can enter the world of neuromarketing. Generally, the requirements to become a neuromarketer are a degree, a scientific background in research and skills related to data analysis or big data.
Companies use neuromarketing to study and understand customer consumption and purchasing behaviour by measuring communication stimuli based on biological and neurological parameters.
Neuromarketing was invented in 2002 by Ale Smidts, Professor of Marketing Research at the Rotterdam School of Management.
Images have always had a strong attractive power, which is why according to the principles of neuromarketing it is always good to place the photo of the product first and then its description. Furthermore, the way the photos are taken, and the way the subjects are positioned can also be determined by applying the principles of neuromarketing.