How Brain Research Helps Companies Sell More Products

Neuromarketing is a field at the intersection of marketing research and neurophysiology, where companies study customers’ reactions to advertising materials by analyzing brain activity and other physiological parameters. The demand and popularity of neuromarketing are primarily due to the limitations of “traditional” marketing and the hope that science can help overcome these barriers.

Science has indeed helped marketers many times. For example, scientific methods have revealed how people make purchasing decisions: rationally or emotionally. In 1978, Herbert Simon won the Nobel Prize for his theory of bounded rationality—he concluded that the brain makes decisions differently depending on how busy it is and the importance of the decision. For instance, a person will think carefully about buying a car, but will choose coffee for breakfast impulsively, since it’s not as significant.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky took this research even further. They discovered that the brain has two decision-making systems: one emotional and one rational; one is fast, the other is slow. It turns out that decisions are made in the brain long before (about 400–700 milliseconds) we become consciously aware of them. So, the role of consciousness is mainly to accept, reject, or reconsider a ready-made plan of action.

How Neuromarketing Works

The main focus of neuromarketing is on emotional and unconscious reactions to marketing materials. To study these, researchers use electroencephalography (EEG), eye-trackers (devices that track eye movements), polygraphs, and high-resolution cameras.

• EEG measures the brain’s electrical activity to assess the strength and direction of emotions, as well as the level of attention and excitement at any given moment.
• Eye-trackers help determine which advertising images capture a person’s attention.
• Polygraphs use skin conductance sensors, heart rate monitors, and breathing sensors to measure the intensity of emotions and the response of the brain’s most “ancient” autonomic structures, which are also linked to emotions.
• High-resolution cameras allow researchers to observe micro-expressions on the subject’s face.

Limitations of Neuromarketing

However, neuromarketing research also has its limitations. It can reveal a person’s reaction to a product, but not the reason why they did or did not make a purchase. There’s also the risk of inaccurate extrapolation: such studies are expensive, so they’re usually conducted with small groups of participants. Additionally, there can be inaccuracies in assessing rational and emotional processes. EEGs are taken from the scalp, and since the brain areas responsible for conscious, “rational” processes are closest to the surface, it becomes difficult to pick up signals from the deeper, “emotional” brain structures when a subject is thinking seriously—the strong signals from the cortex interfere.

The Growth of Neuromarketing

Neuromarketing’s entry into mass markets and rapid expansion began in 2008, when Nielsen, the world’s largest marketing research company, bought a stake in NeuroFocus, a leader in neuromarketing research. By 2011, Nielsen had completed the acquisition and made it a part of its own operations. Today, the company is a market leader with labs in the USA, UK, Germany, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Japan, China, and India.

The main area neuromarketers focus on now is advertising testing. Research helps brands evaluate the effectiveness of different advertising approaches, how well they resonate with target audiences, and provides recommendations on how to create images that are easiest for consumers to understand. In Russia, large companies are just starting to explore this field, but the situation may change soon. Organizers of the Tech in Media competition note that the topic of neuromarketing is attracting more and more media attention each year, indicating that there is already demand for its implementation.