Neuromarketing and Consumer Behavior: Key Concepts

Neuromarketing and Consumer Behavior

Marketing is a field devoted to influencing people to like things, and ultimately to buy things, including things they may not need. Neuromarketing offers a better way to measure marketing effectiveness because it's based on a more realistic understanding of how consumers' brains operate. Traditional marketing relies on data collection through surveys, discussion groups, interviews, and other market research techniques to obtain information.

Rational vs. Intuitive Consumers

A rational consumer uses a logical and analytical approach to make purchase decisions. They consider the facts, compare prices, evaluate benefits and costs, and make informed decisions based on a systematic evaluation of available information. An intuitive consumer makes decisions based on emotion and intuition, rather than on logical analysis. This type of consumer does not focus as much on details, but trusts their instincts and feelings to make purchase decisions. Generally, they do not conduct exhaustive price comparisons or delve into the specifics of products or services.

The Power of Familiarity and Processing Fluency

Familiarity is a key component of brand equity and accounts for much of the competitive advantage enjoyed by leading brands. Exposure provides a mechanism for moving a product or brand from being novel to being familiar. Many marketing tactics, such as free samples or introductory offers, increase exposure to new products, which marketers hope will translate into familiarity, liking, and repeat purchases. Processing fluency refers to the ease with which an object or situation can be interpreted and understood by the brain. Numerous experiments have shown that processing fluency can have powerful effects on people's judgments and decisions, many of which are extremely relevant for marketing and market research:

• Familiarity: When something has high processing fluency, it can appear more familiar, even if it is not, causing people to feel more positively toward it.
• Truth: Arguments and statements that are easy to read are more likely to be seen as true.
• Beauty: Faces that are more symmetrical are seen as more attractive.
• Risk: New initial public offering (IPO) companies with pronounceable stock symbols (e.g., KAR) perform better in their first six months than companies with unpronounceable symbols.
• Learning: Easy-to-process materials are less likely to be carefully scrutinized.

Tips for Enhancing Processing Fluency:

• If you want to give your customers a good impression, give your product an easy-to-pronounce name.
• When presenting your product in a new ad, it's important to know that the fluency or disfluency of how we talk about your product may transfer to the product itself.
• When presenting product information in marketing communications, format and display your message in a way that facilitates easy processing.

Conceptualization in Marketing

Conceptualization is a learning process. It's important to marketers because it helps us understand how brands work, which is a key element of marketing and advertising.