Neuromarketing applied to food: Is it true that we buy something due to our emotions? – Nickologist

By CoperNick

 Martina Pellegrini

 

January 7, 2019


More than fifty years ago, people in advertising, marketing and retailing shared the view that emotions were the consequence rather than the cause of rational thought. At the same time, companies used to focus their products’ strategies on what customers were thinking, not on what they were feeling: “Such companies firmly believed that consumers could best be persuaded to buy their products through an appeal to reason” (Lewis 2013).

Despite these beliefs, emotions began to matter. Over the past 30 years, psychological and neuroscientific research widely started from the work of pioneering psychologists like Robert Zajonc[1] and Robert Bornstein[2], who demonstrated that “emotions are more important than thoughts in influencing shopping behaviour” and also that “emotions can be successfully engineered without consumers ever becoming consciously aware of how their minds are being manipulated”.

Today, every company strives to develop a deep emotional connection between its brand and some desirable personal goals or worthy aspirations, but how? Are there some instruments that allow data-driven analysis on customers’ needs? Obviously yes.         Some of the most common and popular method are based on EEG, GSR and on Eye Tracking. All these procedures are carried out during a research phase in which companies ask specific neuro-labs to observe and estimate the effectiveness of a product. These instruments’ features are briefly outlined below:

 

  • Electroencephalography (EEG) is an electrophysiological monitoring method to record electrical activity of the brain. It is typically non-invasive, with the electrodes placed along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current within the neurons of the brain. Thanks to EEG we can record the brain’s spontaneous electrical activity over a period of time in relation to, for instance, the view of a picture or a direct contact with a product;

    The spike-waves of an Electroencephalography.

 

  • The Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) refers to changes in the sweat gland’s activity that are reflective of the intensity of our emotional state, otherwise known as “emotional arousal”. Our level of emotional arousal changes in response to the environment we are in. It is noteworthy that both positive (“happy” or “joyful”) and negative (“threatening” or “saddening”) stimuli can result in an increase in the arousal – and in an increase in the skin conductance. The GSR signal is therefore not representative of the type of emotion, but of its intensity”[3] (Farnsworth 2018);

Test of Skin Conductance during an emotional arousal.

 

  • Eye Tracking is the process of measuring either the eye positions (the point of gaze, where one is looking) or the eye movement. At the end of the experiment – which normally concerns a subject looking at some pictures or websites on a screen – the Eye Tracking Software creates, for instance, Heatmaps which illustrate the distribution of attention with a colour coded map superimposed on the stimulus with a high towards low/red towards green intensity indicator.

Example of Heatmaps by Eye Tracking Software.

 

Currently, all these methods are especially used by food companies which extremely care about the emotional impact of their labels or visuals. Through research, data-analysis and focus-groups they are potentially able to develop the best emotional product. Are we aware of that?

 

 

Bibliography

Bornstein, R. F. “Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research.” Psychological Bulletin, 1987.

Farnsworth, Bryn. IMOTIONS. 17th July 2018. https://imotions.com/blog/gsr/

Lewis, David. The Brain Sell, When Science Meets Shopping. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2013.

Zajonc, R. B. “On the primacy of affect.” American Psychologist, 1984.


[1] Detailed study: “On the primacy of affect”, American Psychologist (1984)

[2] See: “Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research”, Psychological Bulletin (1987)

[3] For follow-up materials see: https://imotions.com/blog/gsr/

 

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