In the last five years, neuroscience-based marketing research has developed from a novelty to a widely accepted research tool. The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) started to explore the field in 2010 to determine the value of these methods for improving advertisement testing. Prior to that time, the available methods struck most marketers as inconclusive. Moreover, they were not practical to administer and were far more expensive compared to well-honed advertising-testing methods (Vakratsas and Ambler, 1999).
Sometime around 2010, an increase in interest in biometrics and other neurological methods was fueled by advances in neurological science and by technological advances in neuroscience methods and tools. In short, they were becoming more conclusive, more practical, faster, and more economical.
With that foothold, neuroscience-based methods have developed rapidly. Many have become so mainstream that they have moved out of laboratories and other scientific settings. Indeed, biometric tools—which, for example measure a runner's heartbeat—now can be found on smartphones and as “wearables” that monitor athletic performance. And, during the last five years, neuromarketing researchers have conducted hundreds of advertising studies, expanding and improving their capabilities and insights.
The advance of neuromarketing also has been promoted by marketers' and researchers' growing belief that established practices, theories, and models in advertising had overemphasized cognitive processes. Earlier scholarly work had recognized this overemphasis: “…we must relieve measures of affective responses from cognitive bias” (Vakratsas and Ambler, 1999).
The result has been progressive interest in consumers' unconscious and emotional reactions to marketing messages to better understand the role emotion plays in advertising effectiveness.
Initially, vendors responded with an often-confusing variety of methods and with claims of superior performance, which marketers found difficult to evaluate. Most client market researchers simply had neither the skill set nor the tools to assess the scientific quality—or to compare the scientific basis—of the various methods.
To address this quandary, the ARF was asked by advertising, media, and market researchers to conduct a study that would help to evaluate these new neuromarketing methods. The result was a two-part study called the “The ARF NeuroStandards Collaboration Project.”
The ARF's “Neuro 1” and “Neuro 2” Projects
Many details of the ARF's “Neuro” projects can be found in a white paper (Stipp and Woodard, 2011). They also were summarized in two other papers—one in Admap (Stipp, 2012) and the other in this journal (See “How Reliable Are Neuromarketers' Measures of Advertising Effectiveness?” on page 176). (Varan et al., 2015)
After consultation with its members, the ARF developed a proposal to conduct a collaborative project designed to meet the need for an independent assessment of the issues surrounding the application of neuroscience to marketing research. By increasing transparency, “Neuro 1,” the ARF's “NeuroStandards Collaboration Project,” helped members become better-informed users of neuromarketing research even as it put into place a baseline of best practices.
Eight Neuro 1 vendors represented a wide range of methods—
biometrics (eye tracking, skin conductance response, electrocardiography), facial coding/fMEG (facial electromyography);
EEG (electroencephalography)/SST (steady-state topography); and
fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
—that evaluated a series of television commercials. A scientific review process of the vendors' reports involved independent academics with expertise in cognitive neuroscience and communications and marketing.
Neuro 1 concluded that neurological and biometric marketing research methods have the potential to provide important new insights for the evaluation of commercials and other visual or print stimuli. The strength of neuromarketing methods lies in their ability to uncover emotional reactions better than many other methods. The availability of second-by-second data on viewer reactions seemed well suited to diagnose and improve marketing messages. At the same time, ARF researchers pointed out that these methods, like all research tools, need to be validated and administered following best practices.
Neuro 1 concluded that marketers should explore further neuroscience-based research methods. It also provided direction for a “Neuro 2” project that would seek to determine whether adding these new methods to a traditional test actually could help to identify those commercials that would lead to increased sales.
Neuro 2 enlisted the cooperation of five sponsors, ranging from financial to household-products companies, and it analyzed television commercials for which sales data, GRP levels,1 and other business indices were available (Stipp, 2014). The television spots were analyzed with
“traditional” measures (such as survey questions about purchase intent and liking the advertisement);
a range of biometric and neurological measures (similar to Neuro 1); and
the IAT (implicit association test) measures.
A marketing-mix model analysis of these data, in fact, indicated that adding neuroscience-based methods to a traditional test of commercial creative can identify advertising creative that leads to more sales, with fMRI measures providing the strongest improvement in this study.
The Future of Neuromarketing Research
The five-year journey summarized earlier suggests a bright future for neuromarketing methodologies and research as long as vendors observe best practices. Consider that
marketers today are focused on dealing with the rapid changes in consumer behavior, especially those caused by new media technologies that affect where, when, and how consumers are exposed to advertising. It is not only the consumer, however, who is changing. Similar technological changes also are making an impact on the research methods and measures marketers are using.
The evolution of modern neuromarketing research illustrates this well. Not only did the process start with technological innovations but, as described here, those innovations continued during the more recent period. There is no doubt that this process will continue, further improving the capabilities—and lowering the cost—of biometric and other neuroscience-based tools.
Marketers increasingly are using these methods because they are gaining new valuable insights that
help them to improve creative output and
provide a better understanding of the role of emotions in advertising.
These “neuro” methods provide more direct and more detailed information on important aspects of consumer response to marketing messages and on consumers' needs and motivations. If best practices are implemented, the methods will provide additional data points and insights that lead to better decision-making processes.
About the Author
Horst Stipp is evp, research and innovation: global and ad effectiveness at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). Prior to that he was svp, strategic insights and innovation in NBCUniversal's research department, where he oversaw strategic marketing and consumer research for NBCU's television networks and the new digital platforms. With a career spanning four decades, Dr. Stipp is the winner of the ARF's Lifetime Achievement Award 2015. He has published in English and German and presented at conferences in the United States and Europe on a wide range of topics—from advertising effectiveness and branding to the development of the media in the digital age. He also taught a seminar on media metrics at Columbia Business School.
Footnotes
Editor's Note:
Neuromarketing is not a series of snapshots. It is like video streamed at top speed over the widest broadband spectrum. It never slows down; it never stops changing and evolving. To understand it fully, however, it is necessary to take a snapshot of today's practice and how far we have come (and how quickly). While we obviously are somewhat biased, it is nevertheless fair to say that no organization has helped shape and drive neuromarketing to the same extent as the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF). And, arguably, no one has been more instrumental in that process than Dr. Horst Stipp, who has been the anchorman of two remarkable programs: the ARF's “Neuro 1” and “Neuro 2” initiatives. Before time and neuromarketing move too far beyond the present, Speaker's Box has asked Dr. Stipp to provide a brief overview of the past and current state of practice and to point out where the field of neuromarketing likely will be heading.
Dr. Stipp joined the ARF in 2011 after a lengthy career as svp at NBCUniversal, where he led strategic marketing and consumer research for the television networks and new digital platforms.
Douglas West
Professor of Marketing, King's College London
Contributing Editor, JAR
↵1 GRP, or gross rating point, is a measure of the total touch-points achieved by an advertising campaign among its target audience. The GRP number is a function of reach and the frequency with which the campaign reaches its target.
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