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Neuromarketing: window to the Unconscious consumer Mind
A relatively new field in consumer research known as ‘neuromarketing’ adopts techniques that promise a window to unconscious processes, allowing companies to create more engaging, emotive and attractive products. But what methods are used, and do they provide added value to clients above traditional research methods?
Neuromarketing THE TECHNIQUES
Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive method of measuring electrical activity in the brain and offers excellent temporal resolution, allowing the measurement of activity the moment a stimuli is presented. EEG sensors can be incorporated into a headset or hat, with arguably little intrusion to the user. In addition, EEG has advantages such as relatively lower cost and vastly increased portability and manoeuvrability.
More established physiological measures, such as galvanic skin response (GSR) and heart rate monitoring, have proved to be reliable stress indicators and can be used to demonstrate the presence of emotional responses to test materials. Insights can be gained when combining neurological readings (attention, engagement and emotional), with physiological readings (eye-tracking, facial expression recognition, galvanic skin response, heart rate monitoring).
Neuromarketing CONSUMER RESEARCH APPLICATION
The application areas most relevant to neuromarketing are those which invoke high levels of engagement, cognitive load or emotional responses, including:
• Gaming- Real-time arousal and engagement levels can be used to inform game development as well as comparing different game experiences and environments.
• Advertising - Internet, TV, outdoor and in-game advertising can be studied by combining EEG readings with in-depth interview analysis to reveal the impact of first impressions, real-time arousal, engagement and emotional impact to different advertising vignettes.
• Product design - EEG and eye tracking can be combined to measure and evaluate impact, interest and emotional appeal of design features, as well as providing insight into the importance of different sensory and tactile elements to overall design perception.
• Brand perception - Measures of emotional arousal, eye tracking and in-depth interviews can be used to rank the appeal of different brands, products and services.
• Fast moving consumer goods testing (FMCG) - Combining arousal and physiological responses with self report techniques, a robust and reliable measure of the user experience of different products can be created, from the selection and purchasing process, through to consumption.
• Work environments - Emotive affects from different workplace environments can be compared, as well as the effect of cognitive load under stress conditions.
• Gambling - Factors ranging from cognitive and visual attention to emotional attraction and engagement can be measured to enhance the online gambling experience.
• Media - Combining EEG readings with in-depth interview analysis to reveal impact of movie trailers, real-time arousal and engagement levels, and the overall emotional impact to media.
THE ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST NEUROMARKETING TECHNIQUES
While the findings from neurological research can provide useful indicators towards consumers’ preference for a particular brand or product, there may be other extraneous factors, such as the observer’s mood state, attention levels, or environmental factors at work that are not being accounted for. Further work is needed to develop a robust EEG measure that can gauge specific emotional triggers to a given reaction and generate outputs that highlight different emotional responses. Two important questions to consider when applying neurological methods in user experience research are:
1. Would these tools necessarily provide greater understanding and added value for clients over traditional methods?
2. Which methodology and product type would such measures be suitable for?
Further insight into the workings of the human brain will certainly increase the usefulness and applicability of techniques such as EEG. The technology itself is in its infancy, and will surely become a more powerful tool to assess and quantify the needs and desires of tomorrow’s consumers, and is worthy of exploration now. fhios, a user experience research and design consultancy, is exploring the feasibility of integrating measures, including EEG and physiological readings, eye-tracking, facial expression analysis and traditional survey methods, in order to better understand the user experience for a wide range of products and services.
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