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Every second, countless conscious and subconscious thought processes take place in our brains. For decades, science has been studying how they influence our buying decisions. Neuromarketing can bundle these findings and use them for advertising purposes. But what is behind this concept, and can it really manipulate us?
Researching how our brains work leads to higher sales
It is now common knowledge that advertising often has a subconscious effect on us. The numerous advertising messages, such as the advertising on the sidelines of a football match, do not trigger an immediate purchase reflex. Nevertheless, companies pay a lot of money to place their message. This is because they usually have a long-term and subconscious effect – such as making us rate the quality of a certain manufacturer’s products as particularly high.
In neuromarketing, a marketing agency is now using findings from brain research to optimize its campaigns. To do this, test subjects are exposed to the newly designed advertising and their brain waves are measured in an MRI scan. The results show which message is particularly effective and has the desired effects.
One challenge is to focus people’s attention on the respective message. Especially in today’s world, where we are exposed to more and more stimuli in our everyday lives, new means and ways are needed to place advertising in front of people’s eyes. Otherwise the effect and thus the high costs of the campaign will fizzle out. In Germany alone, this amounts to around 40 billion euros annually.
The influence of brands
Advertising for a particular brand seems to have a big effect on people. Renowned US researchers were able to clearly demonstrate this in a study . Randomly selected test subjects tried a lemonade from two different manufacturers. When they were not aware of whose drinks they were drinking, the sweet soda from the Pepsi corporation performed better.
However, when the testers looked at the brand logo, the result changed. Now the Coca-Cola company’s product was more popular. This could even be evidence of the long success story of this and many other companies.
Advantage or manipulation?
Neuromarketing cannot find a button in our brain that makes us buy something immediately. After we have received an advertising message, we always weigh things up: does this product meet my needs and, if so, does it justify the financial outlay?
At the same time, competitors will also quickly adopt the marketing method and rearrange their messages. Just because we see an appealing advertising message does not mean that it is manipulation. The decision as to whether we then actually decide to buy is still in our hands. On the other hand, marketing will change more quickly as a result of new research findings than we might have thought possible in the past.
