INTRODUCTION TO NEUROMARKETING : REVIEW

Greetings dear readers! I am here again to give a summary of what I have learned this week from the cxl’s digital psychology and persuation nano degree program.

As the world gears towards an awakening of the global economy and the post covid economic era being at hand, I will be giving an introduction to the concept of neuromarketing as I promised two weeks ago. I had to talk about other foundational elements of digital psychology before going into neuromarketing proper. So, forgive me for not starting earlier.

In the post covid era(as some futurist and economic players term it), the world would go radically digital. Emerging economies and even third world countries will not be left out of the moving train. This post would also include some of my past concepts because anything I have written that deals with the human brain and what spurs his decision making gets it’s roots from neuromarketing.

NEED FOR NEUROMARKETING

According to Roger Dooley, the marketing field needs a radical revolution. Come to think of this! The mind is structured to hate and ignores anything that has to do with advertising. The most potent force now to influence and persuade people is to understand their thoughts pattern so as to predict their actions.

In a hubspot report, various disciplines and professions were examined to ascertain their rate of perception as regards some variables like "honesty and ethics, trust,and CEO trust". Nurses had 80%, Engineers had 70%, advertisers had 11% and sales persons had 8% level in ethics and honesty. From that result, the advertising and sales field are naturally perceived as dishonest and unethical in nature.this might have stemmed from prior encounter with this fields.

Furthermore, a research was conducted on trust. Doctors had 49%, firefighters had 48%, Marketers had 3%, while politicians had 1% trust level. It is alarming to know that marketing I sclosely linked with politics in their trust levels. The research clearly substantiates my prior postulation that man naturally hates anything that would link him to advertising and business persuation. Even the corporate level was not left out of the testing. It was noticed in the final variable test that people trust the CFO 90%, CIO 90%,while that of the CMO was 20%. This calls for the need for neuromarketing because it would have organizational cost and improve results drastically.

It is a truism that the human brain have learned to naturally hate,despise an criticize salesmen, Marketers and advertisers. However, we can guarantee their subscription when we understand what they want,how they want it, when it is need and providing them with real value for their money. The concept of cocreation has exposed man to be stochastic and further sunstantiated the claim that we might not know what we want. Our subconscious decision making prowess outweighs our conscious by a wide margin. John Bargh of Yale said

" Just as Galileo removed he Earth from the center of the universe,the current revolution removes the conscious mind from the centre of human behavior".

SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

There are basically two angles to neuromarketing. The hard neuromarketing and the behavioral neuromarketing.

Hard neuromarketing deals with trying to predict what area is activating what actions. It is scientific way of looking at the brain so as to ascertain it’s thinking pattern to further create a result of it’s operations. FMRI,EEG,Eye scanning etc are used to check the people under observation.

The behavioral neuromarketing angle deals with already layed down principles to operate. Just like the social Proof theory of cialdini is a strong belief in this type of neuromarketing because it has been proven countlessly to affect persuation. Here, we are not going too deep to using the biometrics and scientific tools but we’re applying knowledge we gained from behavioral science, influence science, persuation science, decision science,etc. It is a passive but effective form of neuromarketing because all principles applied are done with a high level of confidence.

Daniel Kahneman in his book "thinking fast- slowly", He worked with his decades of human decision making experience to make a conclusion that the human thought process is divided into two thinking angles; the system in and system two.
System one is characterized by being fast, intuitive, emotional, rule based, inefficient, etc while, System two deals with "logical grind it out", time long thoughts,etc.
There brain is by default a lover of system one. It stays there many of the times.

Evolutionary Psychology : Geoffrey Miller in his book "spet", gave birth to this school of thought. E posits that in this or iPhone and technology driven world, man is still driven by programs that were written thousands of years ago.
B.J Fog model: This simply explains that any desired paid behavior is a combination of 3 distinct variable.the ability,triggers and motivation. When a desired paid behavior does not occur,the model states that it is as a result of one of the 3 variables absent or insufficient.
Ability: it asks the question of " is the task hard or easy?". It is more important than motivation. Action taking should not be too difficult. Always simplify as much as possible your action taking steps.
Triggers: This is the Acton propeller. It can be in form of ads or copy. Almost no behavior happens without a trigger . That is why you need to send promotional materials often.
Motivation: A good sales copy can be a good source of motivation. As businesses,we should asked people to take action only when we have invested much into their motivation.the 3 frame8of motivation are ; social acceptance/rejection, pleasure/pain, and hope/fear.
In summary Decisons = motivation × ability × trigger.
Robert Cialdini's principles: He made a summation of the psychology of persuation as crucibled on 7 points namely ; Reciprocacity, Unity, Authority, Social Proof, Commitment and Consistency, Liking and Scarcity.
There are many schools of thought and postulation about neuromarketing . No single school should be regarded as the ultimate solution to diverse needs. Look at your particular problem and figure out the one which would be effective.

EEG, Biometrics, Eye Tracking, and Facial Coding

EEG: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) is the academic gold standard. It to a large, expensive, sophisticated, and uses 3d imaging to show which brain is reacting to what as you think. Commercially, the EEG (electroencephalogram) is used because of its cost speed in conducting large samples, and flexibility (because it comes in many shapes.
Biometrics: this uses the heart rate, breathing rate and skin response as it's measuring indicators.
Eye Tracking: measures eye hotspot or places the eye is looking at as it's indicators.
Facial Coding: Paul Ekman was the inventor of the term. He said a skilled Facial decoder uses faces to know and read emotions. Nowadays a phone ,spy camera or camera can do a more efficient work. The technology has proven to reduce cost and scalability.
For best practices in hard neuromarketing, the technology should be combined to boost accuracy and get desired response. According to Nielsen(the biggest neuromarketing firm in the world), "we should not only combine technology but also add self report (even if it contradicts the claim of neuromarketing that man only controls 5%of his conscious therefore may not know what he truly wants) ".

NEUROMARKETING AND PERSUATION

Let me start by adding some neuromarketing hacks to the scien6of persuation. Before any change,every business should always research of it’s implications. Why should they buy? Does it differentiate is from others?, Is it relevant?, Have psychologists researched about it?,etc. There are 4 basic variables that would properly explain this concept. The elements have both a conscious and a non conscious component. They are; GRAVITY, NUDGE, ANGLE AND FRICTION.
Next time, I will be giving detailed explanation of the 4 elements. Till then, have a nice week,and stay safe!