Neuromarketing! Peeping into Consumers’ Minds

What if I say our brains are being trifled by the marketers to make us buy only their brands? Some of you might simply say, “No, I am a learned customer, marketers may influence my choice but they can’t actually make me buy something”.

You are rather wrong!

Accurately understanding customer perception about buying has been a herculean task for marketers. There has always been a hunt for mediums that smartly meet communication purpose rightly,targeting customer’s needs in no time. For this, Neuromarketing is good news. Neuromarketing is the activity of recruiting functional magnetic resonance to analyze brain’s reaction to certain tasks or stimuli. Marketing researchers can now use the imaging tools to observe the areas of the brain that respond positively to the brands, campaigns, and taglines. Neuromarketing tools observe how the brain reacts to print ads, TVCs, packaging, and logos. In United States, about $1 billion is spent on the focus group activities to understand human psychology towards brand. Currently, Coca Cola has taken this initiative to use Neuromarketing in all its performance and quantitative projects by employing facial coding survey. Frito lays seconds this run and made the most of the Neuromarketing research services to remain abreast in understanding customers well.  Hyundai recently adopted brand image resonance services and conducted focus groups to track electrical activity in human brain. The purpose was to understand consumer’s product choice for Hyundai in comparison with the competitors' brands. Although the concept of Neuromarketing is not new, it is only recently that the brands have begun understanding the true potential of this idea. By knowing what exactly drives the customers, the researchers and the marketers can have a better knowledge of what really motivates the purchase decisions. Let’s hope that science can predict our buying behavior and perceptions better than before, but would we call it intrusin in our very personal purchase decisions? This is yet to be answered!