How neuromarketing can make consumers’ lives a little easier
Consumers are typically busy, and many of their purchases are not vitally important to them. They want to save money, time, and energy. They also want to get a good return on their investment when they buy. Neuromarketing allows marketers to address these goals more effectively.
Brands provide a fast-track shortcut through the overwhelming maze of products and offers in many categories. Instead of comparing dozens of product alternatives, consumers limit their decision making to a handful of well-known brands. Neuromarketing helps marketers understand how this process works and how they can make it easier for consumers to use brands as decision-making shortcuts.
A brain science subfield called neurodesign focuses on identifying design elements of physical objects that our brains naturally find aesthetically pleasing (see Chapter 10, “Creating Products and Packages that Please Consumers’ Brains”). This work is being leveraged by neuromarketers to help product designers develop products and packages that are fun to look at, are easy to use, and add a small token of aesthetic pleasure to our daily lives.
Marketing is often cast in a negative light, but it’s important to remember that marketers live or die by delivering products that humans enjoy more and return to buy again. Sound marketing also attempts to understand how different people, with different wants and needs, can be satisfied by different products. This focus on more targeted consumer segments increases variety in the marketplace, provides unprecedented choices, and enhances value. To the extent that neuromarketing can help uncover these differing consumer wants and needs, which people are often not able to articulate well on their own, it can help product companies bring to market new products that have a better chance of succeeding.
This post is excerpted, with minor edits, from Neuromarketing for Dummies, Chapter 4, “Why Neuromarketing Matters.”
About the Author: Steve Genco
Steve is a writer, speaker, researcher, and marketing consultant. He is author of Intuitive Marketing (2019), a study of persuasion and influence in marketing theory and practice, and co-author of Neuromarketing for Dummies (2013), a comprehensive overview of neuromarketing science, applications, methodologies, and ethics. He is Managing Partner at Intuitive Consumer Insights, where he focuses on marketing education and consulting. 
