Idea in Brief
The Challenge
Despite recent studies validating the use of neuroscience methods in marketing, marketers struggle with the question of whether neuromarketing is worth the investment, what tools and techniques are most useful, and how to do it well.
The Solution
Marketers need to understand the range of techniques involved, from brain scanning methods to testing of physiological proxies; how they are being used in both academia and industry; and what possibilities they hold for the future.
The Benefits
By understanding the landscape, marketers can make better decisions about when to pursue a neuromarketing technique to gain insight into customers’ motivations and when and how to engage an outside firm as a partner.
Nobel Laureate Francis Crick called it the astonishing hypothesis: the idea that all human feelings, thoughts, and actions—even consciousness itself—are just the products of neural activity in the brain. For marketers the promise of this idea is that neurobiology can reduce the uncertainty and conjecture that traditionally hamper efforts to understand consumer behavior. The field of neuromarketing—sometimes known as consumer neuroscience—studies the brain to predict and potentially even manipulate consumer behavior and decision making. Until recently considered an extravagant “frontier science,” neuromarketing has been bolstered over the past five years by several groundbreaking studies that demonstrate its potential to create value for marketers.