Top stereotypes about neuro product marketing researchers: the illustrated model of questions and answers

With neuro product marketing researchers, you may be sure that your respondents won’t provide answers that would be biased or skewed. Traditional focus groups or deep interviews are always influenced by tons of stereotypes, cognitive biases, emotions, or even social and moral norms. But these challenges may be overcome with neuromarketing tests now. Traditional methods plus neuro tests give essential and advanced data for launching new products or developing existing products (apps, online and offline services etc.) Read here

As every new research method that is only getting on its feet, neuromarketing is surrounded by many stereotypes. Prior to establishing neuromarketing at your organization, you need to learn about some challenges that this method has to know how to overcome them and achieve better results.

• Making up a representative sample. While conducting neuromarketing research you face a true problem with defining a representative sample. Non-clinical fMRI neuroscience studies usually involve no more than 20–30 people. However, due to the difficulties of data collection (for example, the requirement for immobility of the head during the scanning process), the results of some participants are usually rejected. Participants are also subject to additional requirements related to their health status, both somatic and mental, the use of psychoactive substances (alcohol, drugs), in some cases, right-handedness, etc.
• Interpretation of mental conclusions. When using neuroscientific methods, researchers are forced to construct complex deductive chains, since the signals of a tomograph or other measuring instruments act as a recorded fact. Neuroscience methods include many technological and analytical “intermediaries” between the variable under study and the observed events: physical or chemical processes in the sensor, principles of their placement and creation of conditions for correct operation, signal processing mechanism, data transmission protocols, computer algorithms involved in cleaning signal from noise, aggregation of signals, their transformation and presentation in a form suitable for statistical processing, analytical methods of statistical processing, techniques and procedures for the demonstration of a stimulus series, ensuring synchronization between the demonstration of stimuli and signal to record, etc.

• Need to outsource. Neuromarketing studies are conducted under the control of neuroscientists, psychologists, and other representatives of clinical medical science. That means that neuromarketing is based on outsourced medicine laboratories that may somehow complicate the research process.
• High costs (*depends on a country that applies the neuro equipment, business goals, and variety of using neuro equipment). Although large marketing companies can have significant budgets, for most small agencies and academic research, budgetary constraints can be an important practical barrier to conducting neuromarketing research. fMRI is considered the most expensive among the most popular neuromarketing methods. The average cost per respondent is 500–1000 $. But don’t forget to multiply this sum by the number of your respondents and take into account the associated costs for the research (design, working on stimulus, data analysis, etc). And be ready to allocate the budget of around 50 000$ for this research.

Need to mention that this table does not take into account the cost of software and Machine Learning tools. The development of ML instruments and their integration into neuromarketing may have a positive effect on the cost of neuromarketing research and allow more companies to spend their budgets on getting valuable neuro data. If you want to learn how this will happen, stay tuned! We will cover this topic in upcoming publications:)

One of the main distinguishing features of neuromarketing in comparison with other applications of neuroscience in social disciplines has been the exceptional heat of discussions regarding the ethical aspects of marketing research using methods of brain research and automatic reactions.

In a general sense, the ethical problems of neuromarketing are related to the moral rejection in the society of the idea that the use of methods for studying neural processes will open excessive opportunities for commercial companies to impose their interests on consumers and manipulate not only their behavior but also desires and interests.

This general concern, however, can be fleshed out in the form of a number of more specific ethical issues discussed in the marketing community:

• Fear that neuromarketing will allow companies to read the thoughts and desires of their consumers. This is seen as a violation of the right to personal space.
• Confidentiality. Since neuromarketing research involves the collection of sensitive personal information, there is a risk of violating consumer rights to control its use and distribution.
• The exploitation of certain neurological features of individuals or groups. Impact on unconscious decision-making mechanisms
• Extrapolation from small research samples to large consumer groups may lead to unpredictable results. For example, designing marketing stimuli that target automatic responses may be relatively safe in samples of young healthy people, but can elicit unexpected responses such as addiction or antisocial behavior in other social groups.
• Insufficient reliability and transparency of the results due to the lack of special competencies of a marketer using neuroscientific methods.
• Imbalance of the marketing mix in favor of the promotion system

It should be noted that such problems are not unique to neuromarketing and reflect the general concern of society regarding the use of effective modern technologies that can collect and analyze consumer data.

But are there any ways to overcome these challenges?

Yes! And here is our guide on how to do this.

With the recommendations provided above, you may be sure that implementing neuromarketing into your marketing strategy will go smoothly.

Finally, let’s generalize

TOP 9 Recommendations or Product Marketing Researchers and Managers:

• Sharing and discovering study results because this result can provide a valid basis for the new research. Support and cooperation are the most valuable principles of all time.
• Systematically synthesize or merge the findings of independent studies
• Check the way insights are treated and implemented across the departments
• Promote transparency and fuel innovation
• Increase the level of neuro skills among marketers to make neuromarketing more applicable and benefit from professional scientific laboratories
• Sharing the costs with external stakeholders to mutually benefit from research results and making technology more affordable due to increased demand
• Promote neuromarketing values among the professional community
• Establish independent organizations with the professional community, business, and government stakeholders to create neuromarketing policies
• Development of additions to corporate social responsibility standards

Hope this will be useful for you. In the following articles, we will be covering the topic of neuro-product thinking and how it can influence your business and marketing strategy.

Anna Pismennaia,

Anna Butuzova

References

Pismennaya A., (2021) Scientific And Applied Potential Of Neuromarketing In The System Of Marketing Research Of The Company, Saint Petersburg University of Economics

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