Les Neuromarketing

Neuromarketing Objectives

* Learn how the nervous system translates the enormous amount of stimuli

to which an individual is exposed to the language of the brain.

* Predict consumer behavior from the study of the mind, allowing you to select the media format prototype and development of communication that people remember best.

* To develop all aspects of marketing, communications, product

pricing, branding, positioning, targeting, strategic planning channels … with the key messages in line with what consumers will consume. It does not matter much what you have to offer, but the emotional impact generated by the way it communicates the promotion, especially in the retail environment.

* Understand and meet increasingly better the needs and expectations of customers.

From the business side

* With neuromarketing, reduces business risk because they make products that are more linked to what they want, really, people.

From the consumer side

* This is your opinion: neuromarketing has no other purpose than to manipulate consumers to induce them to buy products that companies want to sell, no matter the quality or nature of the product.

Posted in Business Ideas, Business Info, Business Tips | Tags: aspects of marketing, Consumer decisions, Neuromarketing, Neurosciences Applied to Marketing, reduces business risk

If Your Brain Has a 'Buy Button,' What Pushes It?

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE

Published: October 19, 2004

nowing what brand you are buying can influence your preferences by commandeering brain circuits involved with memory, decision making and self-image, researchers have found.

When researchers monitored brain scans of 67 people who were given a blind taste test of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, each soft drink lit up the brain's reward system, and the participants were evenly split as to which drink they preferred. But when the same people were told what they were drinking, activity in a different set of brain regions linked to brand loyalty overrode their original preferences. Three out of four said that they preferred Coca-Cola.

The study, published in the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Neuron, is the first to explore how cultural messages penetrate the human brain and shape personal preferences.

Circulating in draft form over the last year, the study has been widely discussed by neuroscientists and advertisers, as well as people who worry about the power of commercials in determining consumer behavior.

At issue is whether marketers can exploit advances in brain science to make more effective commercials. Is there a "buy button" in the brain?

Some corporations have teamed up with neuroscientists to find out. Recent experiments in so-called neuromarketing have explored reactions to movie trailers, choices about automobiles, the appeal of a pretty face and gut reactions to political campaign advertising, as well as the power of brand loyalty.

But the trend also has critics. For example, Commercial Alert, a consumer group that is highly critical of neuromarketing and has called it Orwellian, said that such studies were dangerous. In a July 12 letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the group's executive director, Gary Ruskin, asked for an investigation of neuromarketing.

"What would happen in this country if corporate marketers and political consultants could literally peer inside our brains and chart the neural activity that leads to our selections in the supermarket and voting booth?" Mr. Ruskin wrote. "What if they then could trigger this neural activity by various means, so as to modify our behavior to serve their own ends?"

Defenders of the studies counter that Mr. Ruskin and others who express fears about the studies are overreacting and do not understand the research.

Dr. Steven Quartz, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said Mr. Ruskin's comments represented "gross misunderstandings and distortions of both the power of brain imaging technology and its use in marketing."

"It's pure fantasy to suppose that neuromarketing is about embedding subliminal messages." Dr. Quartz continued.

Companies, however, see the chance to find out what their customers really think as a great opportunity.

Corporate executives are the first to admit they do not really know how advertising works.

They spend $117 billion a year on advertisements, but most people do not remember what product is featured in a given commercial. Four out of five new products flop. There is no conclusive evidence that advertising ever causes sales to go up. Worst of all, consumers tend to behave like finicky cats, making it difficult to fathom what they want.

Neuromarketing relies on a brain scanning device called functional magnetic resonance imaging or f.M.R.I., a machine that tracks blood flow as people perform mental tasks. Specific regions light up, showing increased blood flow when they recognize a face, hear a song, make a decision, perceive a reward, pay attention or sense deception.

In the studies, the machines are being used to shed light on brain mechanisms that play a central role in consumer behavior: circuits that underlie reward, decision making, motivation, emotions and the senses of self.

Anything that is novel, researchers have found, grabs the brain's attention system by tapping directly into reward pathways.

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If Your Brain Has a 'Buy Button,' What Pushes It?

Published: October 19, 2004

(Page 2 of 2)

Being able to see how the brain responds to novelty and makes decisions is potentially a huge step forward for marketers, said Tim McPartlin, a senior vice president of Lieberman Research Worldwide in Los Angeles.

Conventional

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