The Age of Neuroscience tantalises marketers |
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In some ways the brain, and not space, is the last frontier of science. Understanding why humans behave the way they do is not only a primary role of market researchers, but is fundamental to psychology, psychiatry, counselling, policing, politics (maybe), sports coaching, and many other professions.
So with technology advancing more rapidly every day, it should not come as a surprise that the technology for understanding people is getting closer and closer to the source of decision making. We are entering the Age of Neuroscience.
Until now, we researchers have been largely dependent upon respondents telling us what they think and why they do things. And because people don’t (or can’t) always tell us the reason they think or act the way they do, over the years we have developed and validated techniques of questioning and projection that enable us to measure fairly accurately, although indirectly, their attitudes and behaviour.
Some new techniques, such as eye tracking, represent a move towards more precise measurement of human behaviour. Eye tracking is a tool used for evaluating packaging, print advertising, out-of-home advertising, Internet home pages and corporate symbols. It documents exactly what people see (and ignore) as they shop, compare product categories or consider advertisements, catalogues or websites.
In eye tracking, the person may view each scene (projected on a large screen ) at his or her own pace, spending as much time as desired as though shopping or reading. As each scene is viewed, a camera records the coordinates of each person’s focal point at 60 times per second. When these coordinate readings are automatically tabulated and overlaid on the scene viewed, we are then able to record viewing patterns and document which products or messages the person saw – and which were ignored. Importantly, no headsets, glasses or head constraints of any kind are used. Scenes shown are nearly life-size, not on a computer monitor.
While eye tracking measures what people look at, it does not tell us why they behaved in that way or how they felt when they were looking at things.
Neuroscience techniques offer market researchers the possibility of measuring directly the brain’s responses to stimuli. For example, if we were testing new products, imagine if we could measure accurately how people were actually feeling about one product versus another. Imagine if we could develop a road safety commercial that we knew hit hardest the part of the brain that responded to guilt or fear.
So, how does it work? Figure 1 shows a basic flow of testing of individuals. At present the technology requires a form of headset that monitors brain activity, in much the same way as a medical electro-encephalogram (EEG). The measurement of brain activity is undertaken and compared with the stimulus being shown. It also works with sound, smell and touch.
Figure 1
Validation software is then used to identify what part of the brain was stimulated at different times and how, and translates this into whether the respondent was attentive, excited, like/dislike, whether the memory was stimulated to promote recall, and whether the decision-making part of the cortex was stimulated in a way that is likely to promote a positive behaviour.
Sounds pretty far-fetched? Or maybe scary? Importantly for us in the marketing space, this technology is still at the emerging stage, and still requires considerable work on interpretation and validation before becoming mainstream. Companies considering this technology should be prepared to work with the provider on benchmarking-type projects that can form the basis of development of knowledge.
The applications are exciting and seemingly endless. Neuroscience can be used to test movies and music, new consumer products, advertisements, fragrances, food products, packaging, concept testing, and even customer service styles, call centre activity, and store design.
The Matrix, it seems, may be closer to reality than we think!
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