The brain is your best shopping buddy because it influences all your buying decisions. Tech Sunday takes neuromarketing down from the shelf.

We are aware of what we do – we know our feet are tapping to the music, that we’re blinking our eyes, that our fingers are, right now, busy hitting the keyboard in a race against printing deadlines. And if we want to pause our play, we just send a signal and the tapping, blinking and hitting stop.

The brain isn’t the most obedient of organs. It doesn’t do what we want – we do what it wants

But what is our brain doing?

Well, we do know what it’s doing – it’s just that we can’t control what it thinks. The thing is, the brain isn’t the most obedient of organs. It doesn’t do what we want – we do what it wants. And yet, we can measure its responses, triggers, and activity and use it for endless purposes.

Developed in the late 1990s by Harvard professor Jerry Zaltman, neuromarketing is a relatively new field of marketing – using technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, EEG and biometrics, the science studies consumers’ sensory, cognitive and affective response to advertisements, brands and products.

Combining neuroscience, marketing and technology, neuromarketing is based on the premise that as consumers,it’s the brain that makes the all-important decision of what to buy. According to neuroscientists, such decisions are not conscious – rather, they frequently defy logic and are influenced by our automatic responses to sensory stimuli. Of course, the more stimuli a product triggers, the more it will appeal to customers.

This means that for a business to target customers more effectively, it must first understand what triggers this response in its customers’ minds, especially responses related to joy.

Neuromarketing can revolutionise the way we market our products and services. Of course, there is always the ethical aspect to this – neuromarketing shouldn’t be driven by profit alone. Rather, it should help businesses better understand their customers, and ultimately better serve them – it is this, in turn, that will impact the bottom line.

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