NueroMarketing in Social Media- New Mantra to Discover why Consumers
push the ‘Buy Button’
*Dr.Kamini Dhruva, Faculty, COBA, Al Yamamah University, Riyadh, KSA
**Dr Rana Almasri, Vice Dean, COBA, Al Yamamah University, Riyadh, KSA
Abstract:
A new field called Neuromarketing (combining neuroscience, marketing and technology)is the
latest buzz across every industry and business sector. Neuro marketing uses learning’s from
neurology about how the brain responds to various stimuli, to understand our behavioral choices.
Studies in Neuromarketing have proven that our brains respond to sensory a marketing stimulus
which is connected to our consumer behavior.
Social media has been one of the latest tools used by marketers, the number of people using it has
grown tremendously over the years and marketers have lapped up even this avenue to reach their
consumers and target audiences.
It has puzzled marketers why consumers sometimes say something and buy something else. The
quest to understand what ticks in the minds of consumers is very challenging and still remains a
mystery largely unexplored till date.
The objective of this paper is to analyze the effects of social media on our minds and find out how
visual, innovative digital marketing aids and other stimuli used by marketers in social media has
an impact on the buying decision pattern of consumers. This exploratory research paper provides
an insight about the future of marketing through nueromarketing
Nueromarketing can be applied in its fullest in social media and its impact on the subconscious
mind of the consumer and these can throw more insights why we as consumers press the ‘Push
Button to Buy’.
Key Words: Nuero Marketing, Social Media, Consumer Behavior, Visual Stimuli.
Number of Words: 255
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Introduction:
This exploratory paper seeks to throw light on a relatively new and hardly explored area of
marketing called nueromarketing. Today’s competitive business world has sent marketing to
dizzying heights as marketers are trying to probe deeper to understand the behavior of consumers.
Competition, technology, new products and customers have narrowed the time for marketers to
undertake market research to capture a larger target audience. The previous decades saw the shift
of marketers towards social media but now, nueromarketing coupled with the interface of social
media is gaining fast prominence.
The central topic of this paper is nueromarketing and its nature and its most commonly used
methods and techniques and why marketers should using this to the maximum extent with social
media to analyze the latest perceptions and trends of people towards products and services. It is a
known fact that earlier brands and companies have relied heavily on great creativity to evoke
consumer emotion, but this paper seeks to explore that nueromarketing is that tool which will
uncover the ‘right now’ emotional state with the use of social media as it is one of the mediums
people share the want, when and how, whether it matters or does not matter to them. As you, our
friends and colleagues devote so much time updating information on social media, it is only natural
that we share information on what we buy and use with regards to products and services and this
is exactly what marketers want to know and therefore offers a rationale behind this paper.
Background and Emergence of Nueromarketing:
The term neuromarketing might sound rather strange. As Sar (2009) explains, the word is fairly
new was introduced by Ale Smidts in 2002. The neuroscientists have demonstrated that there are
three parts of our brain that mutually interact, and each one of them has a specific function.
• “The New Brain“ thinks. From the moment it receives information, it processes only rational
data, and it shares the filtered data with the other two brain parts.
• “The Midbrain“ feels. It processes emotion and it shares only the positive ones with the old and
new brain.
• “The Old Brain” makes decisions. It receives suggestions from both brains (new and mid-brain),
but it solely controls the decision making process. Eventually consumers are directed to buy or not
to buy from the instructions from the old brain or the subconscious brain.
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Marketing analysts by conducting brain activity researches in laboratories are using techniques to
analyze the human brain which is connected to wires and try to analyze how consumers react to a
product, to its color, design or package. The founder and driving force of the discipline is Professor
Martin Lindstrom (Oxford University). His three year research had cost Oxford University over 7
billion dollars. Lindstrom used modern equipment used by contemporary medicine, and scanned
over 2000 experimental brains, which were exposed to different marketing strategies including:
positioning of a product, effect of sublimed messages, unoriginal brands and logos, health and
security warnings, provocative design and packaging. Lindstrom unified the results where he has
proved that 90% of consumers make final decisions on what to buy exclusively on a subconscious
level.
How does this work? Techniques and other studies:
Neuromarketing research is usually conducted through one or more of these clinical techniques:
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): is a technique that shows what parts of the brain
are active by detecting changes in blood flow and the amount of oxygen consumed in different
areas. The more active an area, the more oxygen and blood flow required. Subjects are put into a
cylindrical imaging device and exposed to marketing material.
•Electroencephalography (EEG): measures the electrical activity of the brain (neurons) as recorded
by electrodes placed on a subject’s head. Subjects are either given special EEG headsets to wear
while exposed to marketing materials.
• Eye tracking: eyes are the main focus in this technique as the location and eye pattern and
movement of the respondents is analyzed in depth.
• Galvanic skin response (GSR): when the respondent is shown marketing materials and his
emotions on exposure of these and its impact on changes in skin are noted.
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• Applied neuroscience: is a technique that involves no scanning or monitoring of any kind. Instead
this technique is market research with a focus on the foundations of neuroscience to train marketers
and sales teams to design pitches, offers and marketing messages that appeal to the brain on a
subconscious level. This technique is based off of secondary research—or research already
conducted by others—and is therefore much more accessible to smaller businesses and nonprofits.
In observing a subject’s brain activity through fMRI and EEG techniques, researchers are
essentially looking for what areas of the brain “light up” in conjunction with certain sounds, smells,
images and messages.
Scientific research in neuroscience and marketing indicates that neuromarketing will cause a
revolution, enabling us to see the differences below the surface. Huang, C. Y., Chou, C. J., & Lin,
P. C. (2010). Lee et al. (2007) assert that, in the past few years, there has been a real explosion of
abilities of neuroscientists to directly study brain activities related to frequency, time and the space
where these activities take place. Psychologists and psychiatrists were quick to apply the new
technology in order to better understand human brain, emotions and insights of individuals. Soon
the marketing experts realized the potential of such technologies and, associated with
neuroscientists, created "neuromarketing". Neuromarketing can be defined as a marketing branch
using neuroscientific methods and techniques for analyzing and understanding human behavior
with regard to market and important marketing issues.
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As asserted by Vodopija and Felici (2009), the synergy of senses, a unique experience in which all
senses take part, is very powerful and strongly affects the decisions of each individual. The goal
of the "new" marketing is to achieve that synergy in branding by using all available information
produced by neuromarketing research.
Reimann et al. (2010) and Bermingham, A (2008) conducted a research which showed that the
products considered as beautiful were associated with a higher "reward value" in the eyes of the
respondents, unlike the products which were considered as ugly.
Becker (2009) states that various shapes of products affect customer's opinion. Rounded or angular
shapes may associate with various levels of domination. Thus, for example, angular (square)
shapes are associated with a higher degree of aggressiveness compared to rounded shapes. This
stimulus can be described by various and sometimes contrastive emotional and associative
responses evoked by various shapes.
Stoll et al (2008) produced the results of the research performed by Erk et al. (2002), proving that
the brain activity, in the area in charge of the reward process, rapidly increases when the
respondents assess an object of "desire" (e.g. sports car), unlike the activity when assessing an
"undesirable" object (e.g. a small cars).
Ariely and Berns (2010) assume that the brain scanning techniques can provide indications
regarding the basic preferences of an individual, which are more accurate than the data gathered
by standard market research as these data are subject to prejudice due to a subjective approach to
values. If this is true, the concepts and prototypes of the products could be quickly tested and the
products which are not "promising" could be eliminated. This would result in a more efficient
allocation of resources that could be used only for "promising" products.
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Sar (2009) states that, given the fact that the marketing balances between the products/services the
marketing experts want to sell and the consumers' desires and needs, it is of paramount importance
for marketing experts to know and understand consumers. In the "traditional" marketing these
attempts would use the form of interviews, focus groups, research, observations… Even though
these methods are very useful and usable, they have a pronounced shortcoming: they are not
enough precise and accurate. The most frequent reason for their insufficient accuracy lies in
respondents and their inaccurate/untrue responses. The reason of their insufficient accuracy was
discovered by neuroscientists who found out that "what people say is often contradictory to the
activities of the human brain". To put it more straightforwardly, what we say and what our brain
says are two different things.
Nueromarketing and Social Media:
Social media has now become an dominant and humongous feature in our daily lives so much so
that we now access social networking sites through our mobile phones more often than a computer.
The age of real time customer response is upon us with Twitter and Facebook dominating the
online social networking space. They often blog their experiences about brands and products which
are read by many followers within the community. Electronic word of mouth is now a powerful
medium to promote a brand, a product or an organization and research (Hsu & Lin 2008). Blogs,
which have been used by people to share their experiences with their followers, is considered to
be one of the most popular online mediums of communicationi. (Chevalier & Mayzlin 2006) has
shown that customer word of mouth affects consumer purchasing behavior. Social media has
established personal relationships with audiences through visual trends. Winners are those
companies who capitalize on the right cues which will eventually lead to dales and probably market
share. Social media fosters word of mouth through digital technologies and reduces customer
resistance in terms of giving up part of the laborious information search (Brown et al 2007).
Social media (Mangold & Faulds 2009) amplifies the conversations that take place between
consumers by allowing one to many communication rapidly and with relatively less effort. In the
social networking sites the communication (Bautin, L.et al 2008)) about brands happen with or
without the firm’s permission and firms will have to decide if they want to be part of it. In a recent
surveyii taken in the US, as of August 2015, 72% of online users were found to be using Social
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networking sites. Market leader Facebook iii was the first social network to surpass 1 billion
registered accounts. Social Media includes social networking sites like Facebook, blogs, online
forums, video sharing sites like You Tube, and picture-sharing sites like Flickr. Researchers have
gone on to conclude that the current generation of marketers should include social media as part
of their marketing since it is fast becoming the main channel of disseminating information on
products and services, (Mangold&Faulds 2009). Influential people or opinion leaders have a great
number of ties to other people within a social network and have played an important role in the
success of several products. By their ability to reach to more people the influential people have
been able to spread their message across the network. Network analysis allows us to identify the
influential person within the network through measures of centrality (Alderson &Beckfield 2004).
In our endeavor to get a better understanding of nueromarketing and social media, we conducted
a small survey in Riyadh with the types of contents respondents share on social media. We
collected this information from 544 respondents. Questions ranged from the platforms used to
share content (personal networks, interest based networks, online reviews, social publishing,
,bookmarking sites, discussion forums, media sharing networks, e-commerce etc), the types of
content which ranged from photos, personal information, updates and tweets on their perceptions
of happenings around the globe, sharing information on inputs on products and services and the
the emotional impact of the same etc. This quick survey revealed that 87% of the respondents use
social media to express, share and review content on the purchases, the driving forces, their
emotions, perceptions, visual trends, personal relationships and perceptions and interests which
drives them to engage with the shared content. Visual Content on social media is shareable, It
evokes emotion, It is recognizable, memorable and promotes a brand better than any other type
of content. This gives scope for marketers to utilize
nueromarketing tools in social media to
understand what triggers consumers to press the buy button!
In our quest to understand the interface between social media and nueromarketing, we came across
a technique of sharing called the ‘Dark Social Sharing’, which refers to the copying and pasting of
content and links from websites into emails and other types of message sharing apps and sharing
the same with an exclusive or selective pool of people and resources, which is very different from
information sharing on open websites. Marketers have discovered this to be a wonderful
opportunity to gather the inputs regarding the consumer moods as consumers are using these
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forums to indicate their purchase decisions and express their anger, happiness etc through them.
Compulsion and addiction to social media is a new disease emerging where consumers feel the
urge to check and recheck their status on social media and this platform at times reveal the goals
which drive consumer decision to buy, avoid or discuss about brands.
By advertising and exposing people to advertisements, the impact of this on the consumers can
give rise to new business opportunities. This eventually leads to sharing content and unlocks a new
dimension to marketing of goods and services.
Conclusion:
This paper the authors have only explored some insights regarding this new emergence of branch
of marketing. The ethical aspect of its full usage is debatable but nevertheless studies provide a
possibility of detecting the data about purchase decision-making and buyers' preferences. Being in
its infancy stage yet nueromarketing is still providing researchers with data to ‘join the dots’, to
gain more insights about the human brain regarding customers’ preferences, selection and
behavior. We do not advocate at this stage regarding the success or failure of this technique, but
probably future researches about the complete feasibility, ethical aspect and success of this
technique can be determined. It is evident that social media and nueromarketing will go hand in
hand and offer great scope to marketers to determine ‘Why Customers press the Buy Button?’.
.
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