What Is Neuromarketing?

The so-called neural marketing refers to the use of neuroscience methods to study consumer behavior, to explore the neural-level activity mechanism of consumer decision-making, to find the real driving force behind consumer behavior, and to generate appropriate marketing strategies. It is actually produced along with the development of several basic disciplines that support marketing theory in recent years. Among them, major breakthroughs in cognitive science and neuroscience play a major role. With the development of behavioral decision making and cognitive science, marketing theory can borrow many psychological concepts to explain consumer behavior, such as implicit memory, automatic processing of information, subconscious mind, and so on. Because the human brain controls all aspects of human behavior, understanding the workings of the human brain can not only help explain human behavior, but also help marketers control consumer behavior.

Neuromarketing

The Chinese have heard that "neural marketing" often begins with this story.

In October 2004, Professor Montagu, a neuroimaging expert at Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, reported an experiment in the Journal of Neurons. He used functional magnetic resonance (FMRI) to scan the brains of 67 volunteers. The results showed that most volunteers were in their brains while tasting Coca-Cola and Pepsi without being informed of the brand.

The Mongolia Tower experiment is already well known in China, but in fact, foreign research on neural marketing has begun long before the Mongolia Tower experiment. When foreign researchers realized that it was difficult to obtain comprehensive and accurate information only by traditional marketing research methods, especially the huge role of human subconsciousness, and could not be described clearly by human language, foreign researchers have begun to try to understand the neurocognitive Scientific knowledge is applied to marketing research. As early as 1975, foreign scholars J. Mark. Res. Raised questions about traditional market research. Then in 1990, the scholar published a document entitled "Conjoint analysis in marketing: new developments with implications for research and practice." It can be seen that in foreign countries, neuromarketing has attracted the attention of scholars a long time ago, and has made various studies. Although the specific source is difficult to examine, the scope of application and practice of neuromarketing is indeed very wide. In 2008, the book "Buyology" by Martin-Linstrom gave the Chinese people a real start to understand and understand the emerging field of neuromarketing.

There was such a story in San Francisco. A beggar begged along the street, with a board in front of him saying "Homeless. PLEASE HELP." The contents of the beggar board, if the beggar is still here two hours later, he will pay another 5 dollars to the beggar. The good-hearted man ate a lunch for two hours, and when he came out, he encountered the beggar again. This beggar not only did not want his five dollars, but insisted on giving him ten dollars. The beggar described how he was excited in two hours. Got $ 60 inside.

In fact, what made the beggar $ 60 was just the new phrase "what if you were hungry?" On the board (what if you were hungry?). The well-intentioned person later finished writing the book "Neuromarketing", in which he laughed and said, "It is only a matter of 30 seconds to modify the content on the board, and the realization of this $ 8 profit is actually $ 960 for an hour of consultation. "

Realizing this price is actually the feeling brought to people by mirror neurons. Mirror neurons can not only promote us to "imitate" the behavior of others, but also enable us to produce human empathy and feel and feel others. And this example is just a little "trick" in neuromarketing.

Neuromarketing refers to the use of neuroscience methods to study consumer behavior, to explore the neural-level activity mechanism of consumer decision-making, to find the real driving force behind consumer behavior, and to generate appropriate marketing strategies.

The conceptual understanding of neuromarketing can be divided into three levels: (1) It is different from traditional survey methods in that it can even monitor people's subconscious response to a certain extent; (2) combining cutting-edge technology and cutting-edge disciplines, "Read" the consumer's brain response to products, packaging, advertising, and other marketing materials; (3) Apply research in cognitive brain science to commercial market practices.

FMRI functional magnetic resonance

Functional magnetic resonance is a safe and harmless brain scanning technology. It measures the blood flow changes caused by brain nerve activity to locate the brain's active area, and estimates whether these brain activities are related to attention, emotion, memory process, and identity. Sense, decision-making, etc. The good spatial resolution of this technology can detect whether the happy center of the brain is activated when consumers interact with advertisements, products and packaging.

EEG / ERPs event-related potentials

ERPs is a safe and harmless brain scanning technology that can directly measure brain waves emitted by neural activities, and has a very high temporal resolution compared to FMRI. By analyzing brain waves in specific brain regions, real-time changes in brain activity such as attention, emotion, memory process, and identity during interaction with advertisements or other media can be obtained.

While neuromarketing has become a hot topic, there are also some arguments. For example, researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Tubingen, Germany found that although magnetic resonance imaging scans can accurately provide information on the amount of information entering a certain brain region, it cannot indicate what information is obtained by the rest of the brain.

Although there are still many questions or confusions, the prospects of neuromarketing are still enticing. The application of neural cognition in product research, website evaluation, user experience and other directions has achieved excellent results in the practical stage. Most consumers' consumption behavior is done subconsciously. If a brand or product wants to successfully win the market, it must accurately understand the consumer's subconsciousness, and neuromarketing opens a door for consumers to subconsciously. Door.

Neural marketing has been applied by many well-known companies abroad, such as: Mercedes-Benz, Canon, Microsoft, Unilever and other global well-known companies. Now that the domestic market is becoming more and more mature, companies are gradually developing in a consumer-oriented direction, and the true will of consumers is getting more and more attention.

At present, neural marketing has started to play a role in the Internet field, and it is improving the user experience of the Internet. We can guess that in the next step, maybe mobile phones, maybe games, and eventually our traditional product manufacturing industry, may accept the concept of neuromarketing and reform their products and services. Who knows what will happen tomorrow?

Throughout the world, the Americas neuromarketing is the global leader in the industry. There have been many companies doing neuromarketing research, and they have jointly established a joint research such as the NeuroStandards Collaboration Project . To date, a total of seven research vendors from three continents have participated in the research, using a variety of methods based on biological research, including facial coding, biometrics, EEG, quantitative EEG, SST, and functional magnetics. A wide range of technologies such as resonance imaging. It is understood that only two suppliers worldwide are not involved in this project.

ESOMAR (International Chamber of Commerce and European Opinion and Market Research Association) has more than 4,800 members from more than 120 countries. It aims to promote the value of real problems and effective decision-making to markets and opinion polls. It also values nerves Marketing research methods. On June 8, 2011, Ms. Tang Ruihong from China was invited by ESOMAR to attend SUMMER ACADEMY 2011NEUROSCIENCE-THEORY AND APPLICATION in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and published the topic Applying eye tracking and EEG to online video advertising in China. Motion tracking and EEG research online advertising in China).

Gerald Zaltman, a professor at Harvard Business School who is best at using related graphic metaphors to induce potential consumer needs in related fields, once bluntly pointed out that consumers just feel about themselves. Loyal, but "people often don't know what they know-95% of consumers' thoughts come from the subconscious."

Steven Quartz, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology, also said: "The questionnaire-based market survey is based on the assumption that people's needs are self-knowledge. Not necessarily, the power of neuromarketing lies in its ability to reveal the needs of the brain's subconscious mind. "

This is neuromarketing-the subconscious of consumers.