Neuromarketing: have you heard of the new trend?

Over the last decade a new trend has emerged: neuromarketing, which looks at how our brain reacts to stimuli, not simply at what we say in satisfaction surveys. This new form of market intelligence analyses the impulses that CT scanners record and, as we will see from studies already carried out, there is often a conflict between the conscious and the unconscious.

Of course we cannot expect this scientific knowledge to define, for every business, the ideal pixel size for product images or population samples. It is, without doubt, another step towards a greater consensus. The results below come from studies published between 2016 and 2018, and they show the potential of neuromarketing in a heuristic analysis.

1. Chocolate sales

Specialists Simone Kuhn, Enrique Strelow and Jurgen Gallinat began the study with 18 women, aged between 23 and 56, who described themselves as regular chocolate consumers, buying it at least once a week. The participants were shown a chocolate advertising image and six related images, which included a toothbrush.

The product appeared for two seconds, followed by three seconds of advertising images, and then again for two seconds. The researchers used brain-imaging machines during this test; afterwards, the women had to rank the images according to how much they liked them. From that, specialists built three purchase predictions: one based on the affection shown and the ranking created, another according to brain activity while viewing the images, and another taking into account the brain changes caused by the product before and after the viewings.

German supermarkets ran this test for a week, with the scientists recording actual sales. The strongest correlation between the prediction and real sales came from the signals the brain emitted while viewing the images; in second place, the pre- and post-viewings; only in third, the participants' likes.

The researchers then reached a conclusion: the potential power of small samples for neuromarketing, and that it is reliable to use brain-analysis methods on a small share of participants to predict the influence of advertising on real consumer behaviour at the point of sale.

2. When the brain beats behaviour

Can neuromarketing studies on a few individuals predict mass behaviour? Alexander Genevsly, Carolyn Woon and Brian Knutson used Kickstarter, a crowdfunding site, to test whether brain activity could anticipate results recorded some time later.

For this research, 36 crowdfunding ideas were shown to 30 people. The participants decided whether or not they would fund each project, with real money taken from their participation prizes. During the initial selection process, the researchers also recorded brain activity.

Next, the 'guinea pigs' gave their opinion on each idea (positive or negative), the reasons they thought so, and whether they believed each one would hit its targets. Weeks later, the scientists compared the participants' ratings and the recorded brain movements against the success or failure of each project.

The results? The brain was the only thing that actually managed to predict the crowdfunding outcomes. "These findings show that an individual choice can be generalised and adapted to market level," the researchers say.

3. The heart tells the story

Here they analysed video content and other content with sound only, to see which generated more engagement. What people said they felt, compared with what their biometric data showed, did not match.

For this study, the research team identified audiobooks and their equivalents in short film clips, such as Game of Thrones and The Silence of the Lambs. They then selected scenes with a strong emotional charge, in which sound and image were practically identical. The audio portions were inevitably longer than the video, but their content was aligned.

And while participants rated the image segments as, on average, 15% more engaging, the physiological measurements say the opposite: heart rates rose when listening to the audiobooks, by about two extra beats per minute; in terms of body temperature, it was about two degrees higher; skin conductance, or the measurement of sweat-gland activity in the hands, was also higher.

Sound content may involve users more because it requires active participation to build a scene in the mind. Why? The authors think that "listening to a story is a more active process of co-creation, through the imagination, than watching a video". In the brainwaves recorded, it was clear that activation of certain areas was not limited to those associated with language, but also with emotions, sensations and motor systems, which is consistent with the fact that, at some level, the listener really experiences the story.

4. Intuition, risk and the forming of trust online

Simple changes, such as a site homepage, the choice of typefaces, images and colours, can be more critical to the trust consumers place in a brand than was previously thought. What look like mere design or purely aesthetic choices can shape how your customers learn to trust, or not to trust, your company.

These were the results of a study by Mahdi Roghanizad and Derrick Neufeld, who identified two hypotheses:

a) When deciding whether they trust a site for low-risk decisions, consumers tend to leave this choice to simple logical processes;

b) When they face high-risk decisions, online consumers tend to turn to intuitive reasoning.

To test these options, the researchers split 245 students into six groups. Each group saw a different version of a bookshop website that actually exists, but some saw the real version, others saw changes that included security seals or returns information.

Each student then had to take two decisions:

a) Low risk: decide, hypothetically, whether they would buy a book from that online shop.

b) High risk: decide, in reality, whether they would give their personal data (name, address, telephone number) to the site, in exchange for a gift voucher worth €20.

The research confirmed the hypotheses: when they take decisions that involve risk, such as buying online through a website, consumers tend to trust intuition more than deliberation. Deliberate actions are those based on established norms, being logical and rational. In other words, what they see and feel when they are on a site has more impact than explicit security guarantees, when we are talking about high-risk decisions.

5. Payments over the internet

Do several different payment options make users feel more or less confident? The authors Luis-Alberto Casado-Aranda, Franciso Liébana-Cabanillas and Juan Sánchez-Fernández studied this topic, which they consider highly undervalued.

This work focused on the two primary payment methods: credit card and PayPal. By using scans to identify brain effects, the researchers invited 30 participants to complete simple online purchases. The analysis ended up revealing that the perceived risk of online payments activates areas of the brain related to reward prediction, and that these are highly activated by secure payments.

More specifically, this study shows a greater inclination to use PayPal, because it is seen as safe and liked. All electronic transactions through bank cards, by contrast, promote activation of brain areas associated with negative and risky events.

6. Graphic elements that invoke trust in online shops

Cheap web design looks... weak. The design element most consistently associated with the trust given to a site, more than any choice of colour, typeface or layout, is the effort put into the appearance. At least that was the result of research by Gustav Bergman and Feliz Noren, which focused on design and how a website's look affects first impressions.

They created several combinations of colours, background patterns, approval seals and information such as the business address (or the lack of one), and these were then shown to participants for seven seconds. They could answer only 'yes' or 'no' to the question 'does this online shop look trustworthy to you?'.

Besides the answers, the academics also recorded how long participants took to respond in relation to 31 random images of the page. This period, however, has no value for perceived trust.

For the scientists, the primary challenge was controlling each participant's personal preferences. Highly saturated colours and typefaces such as Comic Sans, for example, reduced the trust given to the site. There was, however, one consistent quantitative finding associated with trust: the time the researchers took to create the various versions of the website.

"We could see a considerable difference in the time it took us to make a pleasant homepage. The longer we took, the more 'yeses' we received. So there is a certain connection between the expression 'professional' and the amount of time spent on the image in question," they say.

Many other studies continue to be carried out around the world. It is not possible, these days, to ignore consumers' more natural reactions when they look at a logo, a site or a product. The better we know our brain, the better we can predict our customers' behaviour.