Neuromarketing
Already in 2015, in my book “Trends and Challenge in Digital Business Innovation”, (Springer International, 2014, Chapter 6 – NeuroIS), I identified and investigated a promising business phenomenon suggested by digital technologies: Neuro-Marketing. I analysed its potential, possible benefits and challenges for businesses.
To date, this is certainly one of the most innovative phenomena on the digital technology scene.
Neuromarketing tools are in fact becoming increasingly accessible with many concrete proposals and applications in the business and an increased concentration of investment and research.
Below, I present three concrete and current areas of Neuromarketing applications.
Branding
Branding is one of the most interesting applications of neuromarketing.The brand in fact inspires and recalls a concept that represents the company, the brand is maintained through the use of products or services, exposure to them online, traditional marketing campaigns, experiences of other consumers, etc.. Today companies compete a lot in terms of Branding Awareness and Reputation, in this field Neuromarketing offers important opportunities:
- Emotional evaluation of the brand: it deals with evaluating the emotion generated by a brand and its competitors.
- Brand personality: it assesses the associative strength of a series of assets in relation to the brand or its competitors.
- Evaluation of distinctive assets: it evaluates the associative strength of two distinctive assets in relation to the brand’s assets in order to identify which of them contributes most to brand equity. It may also assess the associated strength of several distinctive assets in relation to the brand or competitors to identify those that are distinctive.
- Assessment of a new corporate image: it assesses the new design of different brand elements (logo, branding applications, etc.) and compares them with the current elements and/or those of competitors.
Advertising
The majority of the budget that companies allocate to marketing is for advertising. One of the main objectives of advertising is to convey the main values of a brand and/or product to a target audience. Given the way consumers are targeted by advertising on a daily basis, it is extremely complicated to emerge by attracting their attention through advertising. Neuromarketing is therefore used to improve the effectiveness of the advertising message and to verify that the message is conveyed exactly to the defined target audience. It is possible to identify some applications of neuromarketing in this area:
- Animatics Comparison: it is concerned with comparing different animatics in order to select the one that will be most appealing to a certain audience.
- Evaluation of advertising campaigns: it evaluates in detail an advertising spot with the aim of identifying areas for improvement, selecting key scenes and obtaining different versions according to the specific channel.
- Evaluation of graphic campaigns: it evaluates different graphic elements of a campaign in order to discover the parts that need to be improved and identify the elements that attract the most attention.
- Evaluation of digital campaigns: it assesses the emotional response to digital advertising, as well as its visibility and ability to interact in a specific context.
- Evaluation of radio campaigns: it compares different commercials to judge which one evokes the highest emotional impact among the audience.
- Evaluation of advertising material at the point of sale: it assesses the different materials to identify any weak areas and check whether these materials attract attention and generate an emotional response in the consumer.
Product/Packaging
It is estimated that more than 50% of new products fail. This figure increases by up to 90% when we look at mass consumer products. Thanks to neuromarketing, brands can verify to what extent the rational opinions of consumers coincide with unconscious aspects of the product itself and its packaging/presentation (the latter aspect is in fact fundamental for purchasing decisions, especially for mass consumer products). Let’s take a look at some applications of neuromarketing in this field:
- Design: it compares different designs to understand which one arouses better emotional and cognitive levels.
- Visibility: compare different packaging designs positioned at real or simulated points of sale in order to understand, through the use of heat maps, which of these designs is able to attract the most attention.
- Attributes: it evaluates the associative strength of the brand or category attributes against two different packaging designs.
- Consumption experience: it assesses how the consumption experience of a product (soft drinks, chocolate, cosmetics, etc.) is influenced by the brand, packaging, price and other variables.
Below are some links for further information:
