Have you ever bought something that you don’t really need it? Or have you ever been in a situation in which you convince yourself that it would be a waste of money to buy something and some days later you end up buying the same thing?...if the answer is yes, you have been driven by your subconscious, emotional part of your brain. The analysis of this behavior is studied for a new marketing trend called Neuromarketing, which examine the affective response to marketing stimuli in order to predict the consumer conduct while making a purchasing decision by analyzing pupil dilatation, heart rate, blood pressure, and body heat…No, it is not a movie, even though it seems just like Minority report, where people walk and sensors detect their eyes in order to personalize marketing information adapted to the individual profile. It seems this time the subliminal marketing knows what goes inside of our minds, how our brain is influenced by different factors when taking decisions in the purchase of a product.
It is not a secret that human decisions and preferences have always been influenced in different ways, even since childhood, adults try to convince children to do specific tasks stimulating their brains in a way that they know will bring results. Companies are doing the same with their products, using modern analytical strategies to peer into the minds of their consumers in order to effectively market and sale. Companies are going beyond the normal marketing strategies, using colors, shapes, smells, and different strategies to touch the senses of their customers. Successful companies such as Apple are leading the use of Neuromarketing to attract the world attention, making products appealing to their customers’ eyes.
We cannot deny the importance in the incredible progress of science to get a better knowledge and understanding of our brain, it is clear that this type of market analysis will tend to keep growing, providing marketers with even more powerful tools to analyze the consumer behavior. Even though the advantages in this type of research, is easy to wonder if its use will also bring negative consequences, leading to a debate about the ethics to equilibrate the parts involved in order to avoid the manipulation in the consumer decision. We hope that the inversion of capital in this field will lead not just to increase companies’ revenues but also to maximize customer satisfaction and to develop strategies in order to influence people thinking in issues such us environmental awareness.
I agree with your opinion that neuromarketing will help marketer to create effective marketing plan. However, although neuromarketing will enable marketers to measure some consumer preference through physiological data, it does not tell how consumers behave. It is like polygraph test because physiological test may tell truth, but we can’t rely on its result since there is no evidence.
ReplyDeleteThere is often discrepancy between behavior and value/belief. Even though neuromarketing measures some consumers’ preference, a lot of external environment factors affect consumers’ behaviors. Since neuromarketing does not take into account any external factors such as cultural difference and economic condition, it is very hard to tell how effectiveness of neuromarketing.
Consumers’ behavior depends on how they solve their cognitive dissonance. According to an article, they solve their dissonance in three ways:
1. Change their behavior
2. Justify their behavior by changing the conflicting cognition
3. Justify their behavior by adding new cognition
As we can see, it is very difficult to predict consumers’ behavior because their behaviors always change in different situation. I believe that neuromarketing works. However, marketer must conduct traditional marketing to pay close attention to consumers.
Resource:
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dissonance.htm
I don’t think that neuromarketing will necessarily determine a maximization of the customer satisfaction. The most common use of this research method is to know how the company needs to configure the way the product looks in order to be attractive for the consumer. This doesn’t mean that this person will be satisfied with the product. In fact, it could even have the opposite reaction.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, we have to take into account that every cost tied to the market research will end up as part of the price of the product. We know that the investment of this kind of research are not low, so the products could be more expensive than those of the competitors. In the end, the sales could be lower than expected, and so would the revenues.
What we have to be aware of is the goal and ultimate use of neuromarketing, as you said. It will be impossible to fully control its use (just like software piracy), so it will be each company’s culture and values the determiners of the ethical side of that use. Even though the computer scientist John Shirley in his critique looks to be a little overreacting to this, it sounds really logical if you take a closer view.
http://Mfariamarketing.blogspot.com
I agree-Using technology would help us to keep growing and become better day by day. Earlier it was ad campaigns with our favorite celebrities posing in front of us with mouth watering products and now its business intelligence and market research. We don’t have time to go to store and waste hours searching for the shirt we saw in TV or finding Shoe with shock absorbers and calories counter. We need stores which keep items we like. We also need companies to produce products based on our requirements. SO Nueromarketing is just a trying to connect these dots and coming up with solutions which can benefit both the consumers and Marketing firms
ReplyDeletemuchas gracias and ¡Que pase un buen día!
In my personal opinion the world of neuromarketing is one that shall continue to grow and expand as new technological discoveries come into existence. It is extremely important for the customers, us, to realize that even though certain companies will utilize our neurological preferences to market their products in our homes, this is just an advanced, more invasive technique from the ones that are utilized in the present. We as customers must see past these tactics, like for example Steve Jobs and Apple are utilizing to create fanatics out of their customer, APPLE TURNS CUSTOMERS INTO FANATICS , and realize that some of these products are not what they appear and they are simply stimulating because of visual or neurostimulating techniques used by these companies.
ReplyDelete