How do people decide to buy?
Neuromarketing is a relatively new marketing discipline. It’s been around for maybe two decades. But in that time, it has demolished our concept of the buyer as a rational decision-maker and consumer. It turns out we’re all lazy emotional misers.
This is useful. If we had to cogitate about every decision we would be overwhelmed. In fact, people whose emotional centres have been damaged are shockingly bad at decision making – they endlessly weigh the pros and cons. This is because you make as many decisions as possible intuitively. Then when something new happens, it gets your attention, and you intuitively choose to cogitate about it. Once you are cogitating, you narrow the area of cogitation down with intuitive heuristics. This keeps you sane in a world that can get overstimulating very quickly.
How does this affect how people buy?
Any book on neuromarketing I have read refers to Daniel Kahneman here. He discovered that people have two systems to make decisions, he won a Nobel Prize for this discovery. Loosely speaking, they can split in the following way:
Emotional System 1: Emotional and intuitively-driven decision making. In this mode, we let subtle pleasant and unpleasant feelings steer us through the world with “gut feel” (called somatic markers). These markers have been built up in non-conscious memory structures our whole life. These somatic markers and memory structures are built up through a system of:
- Associative Priming (non-conscious concept associations): "Apple > Creative". This is used to help you decide intuitively what is good or bad.
- Motivational Priming (non-conscious goals): "Old computer > need to replace > Apple". This used to help you pay attention to the right things, like a filter. That attention can be non-conscious. For example, your computer starts freezing up more often and you brain will suddenly start noticing adverts for computers or shops that sell computers.
- Habit (repetition): "I always buy Apple". This happens when your memory structures become so embedded and repeated that they require even less memory power. They are very hard to shift.
We use this system to decide which basket of 3-4 brands to consider during a purchase. We also use it when we click on a Google link or click “buy” on Amazon.
Rational System 2: Rational and logical decision making. In this mode, we compare features, assess the logical quality of arguments, and evaluate different future scenarios. These conscious thinking skills are built by education and lived experience with a brand.
- Logic: "I need a new computer > I need it to do these things > so I need it to have these features > this one has the features I need". I make a claim and I have to back it up with clear points and evidence to persuade you. Sometimes I can trick your reasoning using emotional System 1, for example, with personal attacks, ecological fallacies, and confirmation bias.
- Comparison: "I need my computer to have these features > I will compare these 4 options > this one has the most features I need". I compare the features of different options to figure out which one is better. Again, emotional System 1 shows up to disrupt things here too. A process called "anchoring", where I expose you to a high price and then a lower price means you are much more likely to accept that lower price and buy. You can see this when people write "total value" and then "your price" next to it or when a $100 bottle of wine sits next to a $30 bottle of wine.
- Cost/benefit analysis: "If I buy this one with these features, then I will spend more money than I want to". You weigh the pros and cons of different options using our frontal lobes ability to simulate different future scenarios. Interestingly, your response to these points and this evidence is actually governed by emotional System 1 - we know this because a neuroscientist called Antonio Damasio looked at the decision-making of people who had lost their emotional brain centres. He found that they went into an endless cost/benefit analysis without any final decision. This shows that your final decision, even in when you're in rational System 2, is an emotional System 1 process.
They are extremely taxing and our lazy brain only uses them when absolutely required. We use this when considering whether or not to go with a new challenger brand. We also use it when comparing complex professional services such as legal providers. But remember, we still use emotional responses to steer this process.
Your brain has a firewall that non-consciously protects you
On top of this, if you don't have a goal, non-conscious or conscious, for an outcome, your brain won't notice it. For example, if you have no desire to lose weight then your brain will ignore any weight-loss ads.
It also turns out that as soon as you discover one of these tendencies of your brain, your brain learns about it and it stops working on you.
Also, our non-conscious brains will resist manipulation. If I expose you to a tag line that says thrift is good, you will non-consciously spend more, and if I expose you to a tagline that says spend more, you will non-consciously spend less. Your brain spots the nudge and then overcorrects your behaviour.
What does this mean for brand building?
If you are building a brand, then you need to decide on the basket of values, goals, feelings, and associations you want to trigger. This is the memory structure associated with your brand. It should map on to what people already think, so it’s familiar and more easily laid down, but it should also confound expectations in small ways, so it’s novel. This novelty is what triggers your prospect’s brain to pay attention to your brand when it’s in emotional System 1.
Then you need to repeatedly reinforce these associations at every opportunity. Why? Because this is how to strengthen the memory structure. By strengthening the memory structure you make your brand and it’s associations more accessible to your prospect. When that gets to the right point, you’ll make the basket of 3-4 brands they consider during a purchase. Pre-neuromarketing, it was established that a customer needs to hear your brand message 20 times before they can recall it. This is why. The good news is that those 19 times are not wasted, they are reinforcing the emotional System 1 memory structures associated with your brand.
Advertising is a really important part of this process. A theory called low-attention advertising, which is supported by findings from neuroscience, says that an adverts job is to reinforce these memory structures in emotional System 1 – and that process should remain non-conscious. Basically, if everyone can recall the ad then you got it wrong because they shifted to rational System 2.
This is completely counter to the previous model of high-attention advertising, which was based on persuading a rational consumer (in rational System 2).
At what point does System 1 thinking become System 2 thinking?
On your website. Social media activities and clicks from Google Search are driven by emotional System 1. Although social media is driven by social cues and Google search is driven by goal-motivation or motivation priming, both are operating in emotional System 1. Once you get to the website and decide to stay, then you switch to rational System 2 to evaluate the offering.
What does this mean for professional services?
When I worked in big law, we discovered that our pitches were read for just 8 minutes by the decision-maker at a client. This is not a lot of time. There’s a fair amount of emotional System 1 operating there.
However, complex purchases like this use a lot more rational System 2 thinking than small purchases. Rational System 2 thinking gets triggered for all purchases over 19.95 in your currency. In complex technical purchases, the rational System 2 reasoning has to stand up to the scrutiny of others. BUT the initial decision to consider a firm and the eventual decision to buy are both emotional System 1 decisions. Basically, we have a gut feeling and then we rationalise it.
So professional services firms should focus on emotional System 1 in advertising and on social media, and rational System 2 thinking in pitches and on websites.
What does this mean for start-ups?
Start-ups are challenger brands. Incumbent brands are familiar and so buyers will operate in System 1 throughout the whole process. They once did rational System 2 processing, but the result of that’s now been reduced to a pleasant non-conscious somatic market that nudges them to buy. The only way to jolt them out of that is to shift them to rational System 2 decision making. As much as possible, you want to get your prospects to compare you to the incumbent, look at facts, and consider your arguments.
Next time
I hope you enjoyed this and learnt something about how people buy. Next time will look at how these neuromarketing ideas play out across social media marketing, social selling, Google search, and websites. As I have done here, I will focus on professional services and start-up professional services.
Examples of websites built based on neuromarketing
Key lesson: It is amazing how little relevance the attractiveness of the websites has to how much we buy the products...!
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References
Genco, S., Pohlmann, A., and Steidl, P. (2013). Neuromarketing for Dummies.
Sharp, B. (2016). How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking Fast and Slow.
Winton, J. (2019). When it comes to your message, how much is enough?. Mission Minded.
Smith, D. (2002). Psychologist wins Nobel Prize. American Psychological Association.
designer fashion at Fashion Group International, Inc.
1 年amazing really . thanks