INTRODUCTION-

Neuromarketing is a field of marketing research that studies consumers' cognitive,

and affective response to marketing stimuli.

Researchers use technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to

measure changes in activity in parts of the brain, electroencephalography (EEG) and Steady
state topography (SST) to measure activity in specific regional spectra of the brain response, or
sensors to measure changes in one's physiological state, also known as biometrics,
including heart rate and respiratory rate, galvanic skin response to learn why consumers make
the decisions they do, and which brain areas are responsible.

Companies such as Google, CBS, Frito-Lay, and A & E Television amongst others have used
neuromarketing research services to measure consumer thoughts on their advertisements or
products.

In the late 1990s, both Neurosense (UK) and Gerry Zaltmann (USA) had established
neuromarketing companies. Unilever's Consumer Research Exploratory Fund (CREF) too had
been publishing white papers on the potential applications of Neuromarketing.

System 1 and System 2

Based on the Neuromarketing concept of decision processing, consumer buying decisions rely
on either System 1 or System 2 processing or Plato’s two horses and a chariot. System 1
thinking is intuitive, unconscious, effortless, fast and emotional. In contrast, decisions driven by
system 2 are deliberate, conscious reasoning, slow and effortful. In consumer behavior, these
processes guide everyday purchasing decisions.

The neuromarketing concept

The neuromarketing concept was developed by psychologists at Harvard University in 1990. The
technology is based on a model whereby the major thinking part of human activity (over 90%),
including emotion, takes place in the subconscious area that is below the levels of controlled
awareness. For this reason, the perception technologists of the market are very tempted to learn
the techniques of effective manipulation of the subconscious brain activity. The main reason is to
inspire the desired reaction in person’s perception as deeply as possible.

The base of neuromarketing is the “meme”. Meme is a unit of information stored in the brain.
These units are effective at influencing a person who is making choices and decisions within 2.6
seconds. If “meme” is chosen properly we remember the good, joke or song and would share it.
“Memes stay in memory and they are affected by marketers”.

Examples of memes: Aromas of fresh bread, sweets, grandmother's pie; Characters in fairy

tales, melodies that cannot be forced out of one's mind. Thus neuromarketers examine people
(brain scan, revealing subconscious motives) and manipulate them.

"When we walk down an aisle in a grocery store, our purchasing decisions are made in less than four
seconds. There is no way we can think about that in a complete way. Those decisions take place in
the subconscious part of the brain."

-Martin Lindstrom, a marketing expert, on the significance of Neuromarketing.

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Neuromarketing in different areas of marketing
Neuromarketing in Market Research

The vast majority of companies under the umbrella of neuromarketing are active in the
market research domain. These companies are experts in evaluating commercials, ads, new
products, or even measure audience responses to media like broadcasting or movies. 

Neuromarketing in Product Design and Packaging 

How a product looks, feels and functions is affecting the consumer experience in a whole.
Applying neuromarketing principles and neuromarketing testing can provide insights on the
emotional effects of design choices. 

Neuromarketing in Pricing 

Marketers know for a very long time, that price is an important variable in the success of
product and service. Knowledge on how price information is perceived and processed is the
added value of neuromarketing in this part of the marketing process. 

Neuromarketing in Store Design

If every in-store decision was taken rationally, your weekly groceries would take up to eight
hours. The success of retailers depends on how consumers experience their stores and
services, how easy they can navigate and how products, price and promotions are presented
(and perceived). Shopper marketing can be enriched by real time measurements of
participants’ emotions in a lab or in-store situation. Retailers can also apply the scientific
principles of neuromarketing in their retail environments. 

Neuromarketing in (Professional) Services 

The (professional) service industry depends largely on human interactions. How (B2B)
consumer experience the quality of these services is basically an emotional process. This
explains why the best offer for the best price does not always win the quote. Neuromarketing
brings in some heuristics on how to act for a better quality. Or for a better perceived quality,
because most of the time the decision is taken before the service is delivered.

Neuromarketing in Advertising 

Neuromarketing applied to advertising uses neuromarketing principles to develop ads and

campaigns. While advertising is mainly a creative process, neuromarketing can add value by
a better understanding the effects of ads on human beings. Neuromarketing is well developed
in ad-testing on effectiveness. Predicting how well it is related to likability and sales. 

Some interesting results of neuromarketing researches:

  Warning labels on cigarette packages stimulate activity in a brain
area which leads to its intense desire -- despite the fact that subjects
said that they thought the warnings were effective.

 Images of dominant brands, such as the iPod, stimulated the same

part of the brain activated by religious symbols.

 An image of a Mini Cooper activated the part of the brain that

responds to faces.

Who employs neuromarketing?

Neuromarketing isn’t cheap. In fact, an fMRI machine can cost as much as $5 million (and twice
that to set up). Additionally, a single ad sample group of 20 people can cost in excess of
$10,000. By necessity then, true neuromarketing is primarily used by large (or at least heavily
subsidized) companies and organizations. Some recent examples:

 Google and MediaVest partnered with biometrics researcher NeuroFocus (minority-owned by the
Nielsen Company) to gauge how users responded to their InVideo advertisements (the semi-transparent overlay
ads on YouTube). Forty participants’ sensory responses were scored along such criteria as attention, emotional
engagement, and effectiveness.
 Microsoft uses EEG data to better understand its users' interactions with its personal and laptop
computers, including feelings of "surprise, satisfaction, and frustration."
 Frito-Lay studied the female brain in order to learn how to better position its advertising. The company
discovered that it needed to avoid talking about “guilt”—even “guilt-free”—and instead focus on making "healthy"
associations in its advertising.
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6 NEUROMARKETING PRINCIPLES

1. Don’t use “we,” or talk about your corporation. Focus on your customers’ pain point, not yours.
2. Get to the point. Your message is competing with about 10,000 other messages sent to the brain
daily.
3. Be visual. Don’t just tell about a product; show it. And if you can’t show an image, create a mental
image for your customers.
4. Keep it concrete. Ads with facial expressions, which help decode people’s intentions, are one
example.
5. Close strong. People pay the most attention at the beginning and end of an ad. This will help
ensure memory storage
6. Use emotion. Surprise, laughter, fear, and anger all cause disruption— and thus, trigger memory.

COKE vs PEPSI

67 people had their brains scanned while being given the "Pepsi Challenge", a blind taste
test ofCoca-Cola and Pepsi. Half the subjects chose Pepsi, since Pepsi tended to produce a
stronger response than Coke in their brain. But when the subjects were told they were drinking
Coke three-quarters said that Coke tasted better. Their brain activity had also changed. The
results demonstrated that Pepsi should have half the market share, but in reality consumers are
buying Coke for reasons related less to their taste preferences and more to their experience with
the Coke brand.

CRITICISM

Some consumer advocate organizations,  claims that neuromarketing is “having an effect on

individuals that individuals are not informed about."

AMAZING EXAMPLE OF NEUROMARKETING

There was an ad for Patrón Tequila that, whether they intended it or not,
employs a clever tactic based on neuroscience.

The ad headline is “Practice Makes Patrón(client/customers).

in the case “practice makes perfect,” is a common newspaper headline-
writing technique. But when the word change occurs at the end, the
headline is even more likely to grab our attention. That’s because when
our brain recognizes a sequence, it predicts what is coming next
and compares that prediction to reality.
When there’s a mismatch between the two, our brain snaps to attention.

FRITO LAY’S CASE STUDY

Frito-Lay, a division of PepsiCo, is overhauling all of its calorie-conscious snacks to make

them appeal to women, including the baked versions of Lay’s, Fritos and many more
products.

It has researched women’s feelings about snacking,all in an effort to get women to eat Frito-
Lay snacks.

Frito-Lay is using female characters in

new cartoon ads.

To figure out how to sell Frito’s salty

snacks to women, Juniper Park(a marketing agency) used neuromarketing.

Research suggested that the communication center in women’s brains was more developed,
leading her to infer that women could process ads with more complexity and more pieces of
information.

Frito-Lay and Juniper Park asked about 100 women to keep journals about their lives for
about two weeks. According to their logs, the women felt guilty about quite a lot, whether it
was snacking, not seeing their children enough, or not spending enough time with their
husbands. Though Frito-Lay had often tried advertising snacks as guilt-free, this led to the
conclusion that “we’re not going to alleviate her guilt,”

Baked Lay’s will no longer be in a shiny yellow bag, but in a matte beige bag that displays
pictures of the ingredients like spices or ranch dressing. Some of the new Frito-Lay
packaging is in stores already.

The accompanying advertising campaign, “Only in a Woman’s World,” began on 2009.Frito

Lay has also started running running webisodes at AWomansWorld.com, a site that Frito-
Lay and Juniper Park created.

The campaign features four cartoon women who are “fab, funny, fearlessly female,” as the
Web site puts it, who talk about exercising, eating and men