When neuroscience meets marketing

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In his 2019 TEDx Talks session, neuroscientist Dr. Terry Wu brought up a research by North, Hargreaves, & McKendrick (1999) that studied the influence of in-store music on wine selections. The research found that on the days that the store played German music, German wines outsold French wines, whereas on the days that the store played French music, French wines outsold German wines.

“But here’s the kicker,” Dr. Wu continued, “They asked shoppers if the background music influenced their wine selections, as you probably could guess, over 90% of the shoppers said no.”

This study showed that our buying decisions could be influenced by something so subtle that we hardly even noticed. Yet, this study also raised some important questions: Do we make decisions consciously based on facts, reason and logic? Or do we make decisions unconsciously based on emotions, feelings and intuition?

It turns out, 95% of our purchasing decisions are subconscious, and this is where neuroscience meets marketing. In the same seminar, Dr. Wu communicated the concept of neuromarketing. Neuromarketing is a new science of consumer decisions that studies how we make buying decisions and how our emotions and intuition shape our decisions. While still facing its fair share of sceptics, the application of neuromarketing by brands is growing, especially as traditional marketing fails to understand consumers’ unconscious emotional experience.

Tizar Shahwirman, brand accelerator consultant at Big Change Agency, concurs that brands nowadays are leaning towards a more humanistic approach when it comes to marketing. He observes that brands are starting to make conscious efforts to understand the human psyche, which as Carl Jung conceptualised comprises three components: the ego, the personal unconsciousness and the collective unconsciousness.

The collective unconsciousness component has 12 personality archetypes that brands have used to guide their integrated marketing efforts. These archetypes are the sage, the innocent, the explorer, the ruler, the creator, the caregiver, the magician, the hero, the rebel, the lover, the jester and the orphan.

“Let’s take a look at this popular soap brand, which uses milky white as their dominant colour. By looking at their font and design choices, we can see that this brand represents the ‘Innocent’ archetype. These choices represent the image they want to portray, which in this case may be ‘purity’,” Tizar added. Brands have found ways to communicate their messages to the prospective consumers by influencing their subconscious.

Understanding the factors that influence consumers’ subconscious can lead to monetary gains for brands. Google, for example, found that a minor colour adjustment could lead to a $200 million increase in ad revenue. Google designers initially noticed that users were more likely to click through when a link was presented in a certain shade of blue as opposed to another shade of blue.

Thus, Google ran A/B tests on 41 shades of blue, which resulted in the discovery that a slightly purpler shade of blue was more conducive to clicking than a slightly greener shade of blue. These findings were the foundation of the company’s decision to change the link colour from then on. Users who clicked on the links based on colours did not do so consciously, which further illustrates the role our subconscious plays in our decision making process.

While its popularity is growing, some are still questioning the merits of neuromarketing. Is it worth the financial, time and resources investment? How to do it and which tools are the most effective?

In general, brain scanning, which measures neural activity with tools, such as fMRI and EEG, and physiological tracking, which measures eye movement and other proxies for that activity, are the most common methods of measurement. Perhaps the advantages of the neuromarketing approach are easier to see when they are directly compared to the traditional marketing approach.

Unlike tools of traditional marketing, such as interview and survey, the tools of neuromarketing eliminate bias and the tendency to provide answers that are viewed as ‘acceptable.’ For example, a team led by Moran Cerf, a neuroscientist and professor at the Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, predicted the success of movies with more than 20% greater accuracy than traditional methods by using the synchronicity of EEG readings of audience members as they watched movie trailers.

The study measured the participants' level of engagement in real time by analysing their brain waves. Each trailer was assigned a neural similarity score based on the extent to which viewers had similar brain patterns. More similar brain patterns are considered a sign of greater engagement with the content. The neural similarity method also identified the peak moments of engagement.

Movie trailers that achieve peak moments of engagement in the first 16-21 seconds had the highest ticket sales upon release. Such neuroscientific findings can be useful to formulate the marketing strategies of upcoming movies and content.

As exciting and revolutionary as this new science is, it is important to note that this neuroscientific approach to marketing is not for everyone. Tizar argues that this approach may not be effective when used to market primary needs products, “Especially these days, for such products consumers are usually more price sensitive than anything.”

The critics of neuromarketing also question the ethical integrity of this approach, given that neuromarketing provides insights that indicate the processes humans are not aware of. One of the biggest fears generated by neuromarketing is the possibility that marketers will find and abuse the ‘buy button’ in consumers’ brain, which is then used to tempt consumers to increase their sales.

Not to mention, the equipment used to conduct neuromarketing studies are relatively more expensive (i.e. fMRI and EEG machines) in comparison to the equipment needed for traditional marketing research, which can be a major hindrance to the adoption of this approach by smaller companies.

As of today, neuromarketing is still a relatively new concept that is yet to be widely adopted and used. However, the benefits and insights the science has been able to provide so far indicate a promising future for its application.

As for the critiques sent its way, Tizar believes that marketing – in any form, including neuromarketing – can be a double edged-sword; it can bring about good or bad impacts that ultimately depend on our intentions and how we use it.