Neuromarketing

When Consumption Isn’t Conspicuous

Marketers know that a key element in many purchases is to signal something about the buyer. A Toyota Prius, for example, says that its owner is concerned about the environment. Expensive luxury brands let the world know the buyer has discriminating taste, and, more importantly, has plenty of money. Whether you believe [...]

The Buying Brain by A. K. Pradeep

Review: The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind by A. K. Pradeep
The world of neuromarketing seems to be shrouded in mystery. There are no university studies that prove one can improve advertising effectiveness or design better products using brain scans or biometrics. Virtually all of the neuromarketing research to date [...]

Virtual Supermarket

One of the challenges facing marketers is the difficulty in predicting real-world behavior from data captured in less than real circumstances. A horizontal, immobile subject surrounded by a claustrophobic, noisy fMRI tube might reasonably be expected to behave differently than one walking around a retail store, for example. While EEG caps and wireless [...]

Proof That Women ARE Smarter?

With news swirling about the probable demise of embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward, one neuromarketing firm, Innerscope Research, has data they say show that even weeks ago women found Hayward less believable than men did. This video tracks the biometric response of viewers to the BP “Apology” ad:

The reactions charted on the screen are [...]

Brain Scans Top Surveys

What’s more accurate than asking people to predict their behavior? According to a new study at UCLA, the answer is, “Scan their brains.” This may not come as a surprise to those engaged in neuromarketing research, but the newly published research is one step in the process of validating brain scan techniques as a [...]

Scent Nearly Doubles Sales

Finnish scent marketing firm Ideair used ten restaurants and bars to conduct an interesting test of the effect of scent on product sales. As reported by Reuters, five locations used only visual ads for a specific liquor brands while the other five used the same ads but added scent diffusers. The aroma [...]

Simple Guarantees Work Best

The issue of simplicity vs. complexity is, well, complicated. In business, simplicity and brevity are usually greatly preferred, but in marketing trying to get your message into a few words sometimes doesn’t work as well as longer text. For example, some of the most effective direct sales letters are lengthy, running many pages [...]

Cut Products, Boost Sales

I’ve written about some of the research that shows that shoppers don’t always respond positively to a bigger selection of products (see More Choices, Fewer Sales) and extreme product/brand proliferation (see Mega-Branding: The Purple Oreo Problem). Now, retailers are implementing the concept of reducing selection in their stores and finding that it can indeed [...]

Emotional TV Programming and Ad Effectiveness

In American Idol, Neuromarketing Style I noted that the Fox show I’d really like to see brain activity for was the ultra-intense drama 24. The combination of suspense, rapid-fire action, and occasional brutality would make for some interesting brain scans. But what of the ads that have to follow, say, a scene where [...]

Your Brain on Soup

Soup is a product you probably don’t lust for. Sure, a hot bowl of soup is nice after a chilly job of shoveling snow out of the driveway, but rarely is it more than an afterthought, or a quick prelude to a more interesting main course. If you are Campbell Soup Co., though, [...]