How does Neuromarketing influence decision making?

In 1975 Pepsico company launched a campaign where they gave each consumer a bottle of Pepsi and a bottle of Cocacola to taste and then tell which one has a better taste. But it was a blind test which means none of the consumers knew which brand they were tasting. The result was quite shocking because most of the consumers chose Pepsi over Coca-Cola.

Coca-cola company was constantly losing market share and in 1985 the company took a massive step. They brought a new drink in the market with a completely new taste and named it the “New Coke”. Before launching New Coke they experimented over 200000 people and everyone liked the taste of New Coke than the old Coca-Cola.

But things went worse when they launched New Coke. Most of the customers couldn’t accept it. People started protesting and demanding the old Coca-Cola back. According to Coca-Cola's website the company was getting 1,500 calls a day on its consumer hotline. After some months the company had to relaunch the old Coca-Cola naming it “Coca-Cola Classic”. After relaunching Coca-cola classic sales became doubled and yes, customers were finally satisfied.

Now you might be thinking why people couldn’t accept New Coke even though it had better taste than Coca-Cola Classic? Well, here we introduce the concept of Neuromarketing.

When we say neuromarketing you might have already assumed that it will be something related to neuroscience. Well, it is related to neuroscience. If I ask you, do you make all your decisions consciously what will you answer? Most of the people will say Yes! Because we like to think of ourselves as logical decision-makers while it is not completely true.

Decision-making was easy at some moment in the past. But in today’s world, we are inundated with brands and alternatives. Say you went to purchase a bottle of water. Bangladesh has 150 bottled water companies nationwide. You are right; a tasteless colorless liquid has these many alternatives then you can understand the rest. Now does it affect our purchasing decision? Yes, it does. It has made it more difficult for us to make decisions consciously. Thus, we rely on our emotions. According to a Harvard professor, we make 95% of our purchasing decisions subconsciously or we can say emotionally.

Now let me tell you how neuromarketing works. Theories tell us Neuromarketing is the measurement of physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers’ motivations, preferences, and decisions. In simple words, Neuromarketing simply studies the human brain and predicts consumer behavior, and eventually affects consumer decision making.

Now, how neuromarketing does that? There is three-part of our brain or we can say we have three versions of ourselves. One is the new brain or the rational decision-maker, then the middle brain or the emotional decision-maker, and finally the reptilian brain which actually makes all the decisions. And this is the reptilian brain that marketers target to affect consumer decision-making. When some brand connects us with it somehow emotionally our subconscious mind automatically chooses the product even though sometimes we don’t know it.

A study was done on a wine shop to find out if the music of the shop can anyhow influence the purchasing decisions of the customers. The study shows consumers bought french wine when the shop played french music and people bought German wine when they played German music. But when the consumers were asked if the music anyhow affected their purchasing decisions, they confidently refused it because they perceived that they were making the decisions consciously.

So this is the power of emotion and that’s what brands use to affect consumer’s purchasing decisions.

And that’s exactly what happened with New Coke also. Coca-Cola company has always associated itself with family, emotion, and happiness. Over the last hundred years, the company was able to create an emotional bond with its customers. Now the consumers no longer care about the taste rather they subconsciously give more importance to the hundred years old brand name. Coca-Cola classic was associated with people’s memories and emotions which New Coke didn’t have and yes, neither Pepsi.

Some people say it was a well-planned strategy of Coca-Cola company to get their market share back but they have never accepted it. Who knows what the truth was? But this case study definitely shows us the superpower of neuromarketing and how it can be used to influence our very own decisions as consumers.

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Source: Harvard business review, Neuro-insight.com, Coca-colacompany.com