OPINION: NEUROMARKETING M
uch of our decision-making is based on associations we’re not consciously aware of. People are not as
rational as they think they are and asking them to explain their behaviour and how they might act in the future is only going to tell part of the story. Neuromarketing can be used to bridge this gap and shed light on why we behave the way we do. While there’s no guarantee that a
person’s emotional response will accurately predict their behaviour, it’s infinitely more reliable than just asking them. Relying on surveys and focus groups alone is limiting because people are so heavily influenced by factors outside their conscious awareness. Neuromarketing can give insight into the real drivers of consumer behaviour, including our subconscious associations and emotions – something which is essential throughout the marketing process, from testing initial design ideas to finding out why a brand is not performing well. Just as with traditional market research,
neuromarketing companies are moving away from lab methods towards online
Duncan Smith Managing director, Mindlab International
tests. Some use online eye-tracking and facial coding, while others, including Mindlab, use established psychological measures such as implicit-association testing. This allows tests to be run faster on more participants at a lower price. Most neuromarketing applications
come from academia, are backed up by peer-reviewed studies and based on sound scientific principles. But many applications have in the past been oversold, and when over-excited marketers with little scientific training get hold of the technology, it can be misused. To get the best results a combination
of measures is often what’s needed. For example, while EEG can pinpoint where people are paying attention, it’s not good at distinguishing between positive and negative responses. If you want to identify
specific emotions, facial coding may be a more sensible approach, though to understand people’s subconscious feelings, implicit-association testing is more reliable. Neuromarketing is easier to apply in
business-to-consumer environments, making it ideally suited to the hospitality and spa industries. One low-cost application might be to incorporate implicit-association tests into online customer satisfaction surveys; Mindlab is currently speaking to a five-star hotel in London about doing just this.
Smith is a biological sciences graduate and worked in private education and corporate research before heading up Mindlab. Clients of the neuromarketing firm include Innocent Drinks and Lloyds Bank. Details:
www.themindlab.co.uk
Many applications have in the past been oversold, and when over-excited marketers with little scientific training get hold of the technology, it can be misused
I
’m sceptical about the claims made for neuromarketing because I’ve never seen any proper evidence that it works. My first issue is that
the term ‘neuromarketing’ is applied to a number of technologies that are not neuro-measures at all. While fMRI and EEG do look at brain activity, techniques such as facial coding, eye-tracking, skin conductance and biometrics do not. My second issue is that it’s based on the
unproven premise that monitoring people’s brain activity will give you unique insight into how they’re likely to behave. But in this situation, surely the most logical course of action is to look not at people’s brain patterns, but at how they behave? For example, in one neuromarketing
experiment, supermarket shoppers wore EEG headsets to see if the data collected correlated with their purchasing decisions. But if you want to understand someone’s purchasing decisions, why not just look in their trolley? I fail to see how monitoring
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Mike Page
Cognitive psychology lecturer, University of Hertfordshire, UK
a small number of people’s brains – and the technology is so expensive it can only be a small number – can predict how a much larger number of people might behave, more accurately than getting a middle-sized number of people to actually demonstrate the behaviour. Rather than putting 30 people in a brain-scanner to monitor their response to a set of adverts, why not let 300 people watch those adverts, then set them lose in a controlled environment and see what they buy? My final point is that while fMRI and
EEG can show when someone is having an emotional response, it’s impossible to be sure what the mental content of that response is. A few years ago there
was a claim that people were literally in love with their iPhones because, in fMRI testing, the sound of their phone ringing made the part of their brain called the insula light up, just as it did when they saw their girlfriend or boyfriend. The trouble is, the insula lights up for loads of things! Its activation is simply not specific enough for it to be a useful diagnostic tool – unless good evidence shows otherwise, of course. I’m still waiting.
Mike Page is a cognitive psychologist. As well as research and teaching, he’s involved with several innovative projects, including The Cube Project. Details:
www.cubeproject.org.uk
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