We, marketers, like to think we are pretty smart at figuring out how consumers think. We study their purchase intents, aspirations and what they think about brands. We speak to their emotions and their concerns. We look at their environmental and economic factors, and how these affect purchasing trends and attitudes.
But despite this black and white, we tend to pay little attention to the grey matter that actually makes purchasing decisions – the brain.
Sure, we ask questions, but often the conclusions we take from these kinds of research are based on a rather superficial understanding of how the brain works.
In fact, it has been suggested that most consumer researches are ambiguous because it is based on the consumers’ rationalization of their decision making process rather than the subconscious forces that drive it.
Subconscious? Don’t fret, we do it all the time ourselves. Remember the time, for some of you are very recent, when you bought something and as soon as you get home, you whispered to yourselves ‘Holy smokes.., why did I buy this crap?’ That was your subconscious at work.
Since it is central to decision making, a better understanding of neuroscience is a potential goldmine of insights for marketers to trawl through and glean actionable insights into how purchasing decisions are truly made.
To start with, a basic understanding of the physical parts of the brain provides useful information that marketers can use.
According to the recent neuroscience discovery, we humans have three parts to our brains – a “reptilian” brain, a “limbic” brain, and a “higher primate” brain, known as the “cortex.”
The biggest part of our brain and most recently evolved is the cortex. All the higher apes have it, but ours is the most sophisticated. It processes symbols, abstract thought, logic, and time.
It used to be believed that the cortex dominated the other part of our brain. Now the new neuroscience knows this is not true. In times of stress we humans often move away from logic to the other part of our brain without being consciously aware of it.
Although we don’t like to admit it, we human are basically irrational beings that often post rationalize our decisions.
The limbic brain developed before cortex brain. It handles complex emotions like love, compassion, envy, and hope. This part of the brain can be subconsciously triggered through right stimuli.
The reptilian brain is, evolutionarily speaking, the most ancient and basic part of brain. It is solely concerned with survival and reproduction, it does not have the capacity for complex thought, or even emotion. Instead it thinks only in terms of fight or flight, hunger and sex.
Understanding how the brain functions on all three levels is a key to creating effective communication campaigns. Of the three, most marketers tend to focus on limbic and cortex brains only. However, neuroscience has found the reptilian part of our brain has a powerful tendency to hijack the decision making process – often without us being aware of it. Some savvy marketers have made this shift in analysing consumer insight
Change your way in analysing your consumer insights by tapping into neuroscience in order to develop effective advertising and marketing output. Work with consultant when necessary to step further to develop advertising and marketing campaigns that speak to all three levels of consumers’ brains.
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