Development of Neuromarketing Model in Branding Service
Aida Azlina Mansor & Salmi Mohd Isa Graduate School of Business, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. 04 – 6535905
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Development of Neuromarketing Model in Branding Service
The study of Neuromarketing has become the new research in the marketing field. There is a need to further explore its benefits as a marketing tool to understand the subconscious mind of the consumer from the brain activities. In practice, consumer mostly uses their conscious mind for buying decision. However, observing into the subconscious mind of the consumer is essential for brand decision. Hence, the development of Neuromarketing model is significant for branding because it can provide benefit to the consumer for buying decision and to the company in delivering better service to the customers.
Keywords: Neuromarketing, subconscious mind, purchase decision, branding service
INTRODUCTION The concept of ‘neuromarketing’ has been the object of new research in marketing. Initially, the concept is exclusively associated with the brain activities, understood as the person’s unconscious mind to purchase decision. Subsequently, the combination of neuroscience and marketing can help to examine the subconscious mind of the consumer and identify consumer attitudes and behaviors. The reason when a customer made a purchase, their conscious mind pays attention to the familiar item, but they actually did not know why they spend. The previous study finds that consumer attitudes and behaviors are not consistent Neuromarketing (NM) merges methods from neuroscience and marketing to better understand how the human brain generates decisions in marketing and social contexts. The concept of NM has been the purpose of new research in marketing currently. These new marketing tools were developed by Zaltman & Kosslyn (2000), where the main purpose of this invention to improved marketing research tools by using neuroimaging to decide a consumer’s reaction especially subconscious part of the mind to
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marketing stimulus. NM can be used to help service providers to develop more effective strategies, providing better and efficient services to their customers. The purpose when consumers made a purchase, their conscious mind pays attention to the familiar item, but they actually did not know why they spend. This is where the subconscious mind plays a role. The underlying reasons for consumers to make a purchase is unknown, therefore by applying neuroscientific research, such as neuroimaging to the consumer under the discipline of NM, the result can be found and clearly understood. This also supported by Sebastian (2014), that from the study of NM several indicators can be measured such as emotional engagement, memory retention, purchase intention, novelty, awareness, and attention. The aim of this paper is to develop the neuromarketing (NM) model by observing the consumers’ physical, mental reaction to the situations and analyze a conclusion based on their feedback in the service industry. NM tries to explain the mysterious subconscious level of consumer mind and to explore the power of marketing stimuli by observing and analyze consumer emotions. Emotional attachment is an important factor in consumer buying decision. In the decision buying process, what consumers see and what they pay attention are filter by emotional state. NM could discover important signal about human preferences and emotional responses by exploring the conscious and subconscious mind of the consumer (Suomala et al., 2012). The reactions and emotions are found in the brain for only a brief time and cannot be translated into descriptive responses to questionnaires, meaning that traditional investigations used for brand building are of doubtful utility (Colaferro & Crescitelli, 2014). Traditional marketing such as focus groups, interview and survey focused at the conscious level of the consumer mind, however, as research methods, techniques and tools have continuously grew and the development of these instruments has seen an important improvement, NM methods, and techniques added depth and accuracy to traditional studies (Al Pop, Dabija, & Iorga, 2014).
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Of course, traditional market research has always been interested in analyzing and predicting purchase behaviors, but the arrival of high-profile neuroimaging studies seems to have driven an explosion in public attention (Javor, Koller, Lee, Chamberlain, & Ransmayr, 2013). There would need to be experimental methods that measure the contribution of each brain structure to the overall decision. Once this task is concluded, the model could be operationalized by determining which stimuli (marketing inputs) provide the appropriate brain structure with the material it needs to accomplish its assigned task (Fugate, 2007).
NEUROMARKETING Neuromarketing is a new application of the neuroscientific approach to human behavior in the marketing context. For decades, the advertising and media industries have relied on conventional selfreport surveys, experiments and focus groups to measure the wants, needs, and attitudes of customers and audiences (McDowell & Dick, 2013). Recently, BrightHouse, an Atlanta marketing firm has introduced this concept. The firm, which sponsored the interference of neurophysiologic research into marketing fields and now the firm has more than 500 customer-product companies as clients (Hammou, Galib, & Melloul, 2013). The purpose of analyzing data, images is to identify how well and how often the brain appointed the areas for attention, emotion, memory, and personal implication. The analyzed data can explicitly inform marketers about a customer’s thoughts while watching the experimental content (Hammou et al., 2013). The human mind, it would seem, is a complex mechanism, filled with conflicting needs and a steaming mess of feelings it is an unpredictable black box (Barkin, 2013). NM brings to endure a wider range of knowledge, aggregating to behavioral information the hidden motivations in the unconscious mind that guide individuals in their process of choosing (Colaferro & Crescitelli, 2014). The majority of the social sciences has not yet adopted neuroimaging as a standard research tool (Lee, Broderick, & Chamberlain, 2007). Neuroeconomics started with the use of neuroimaging, but 4
researchers in the field of marketing, in general, have been slow to realize the benefits of imaging studies, even though both fields of study share common concerns related to processes of decision and exchange. NM is a new field of marketing research that studies customers' sensorimotor, cognitive and affective response to marketing stimuli and NM goals to investigate and understand customer behavior by reviewing the brain (Uprety & Singh, 2013). Subsequently, the first neuroeconomic papers had been published, marketing scholars learned the potential of neuroscientific approaches as a new research approach besides the traditional qualitative and quantitative methodological spectrum in the social sciences (Javor et al., 2013). NM works in a variety of ways, but the aim is to observe shoppers' physical or mental reactions to situations, drawing conclusions based on them. This could mean measuring shoppers' brainwaves during particular shopping tasks, enabling researchers to gain insight into their state of mind when they find a bargain, or their response to a certain commercial (R. Thomson, 2013).
Neuroimaging is a suitable method for investigating customer perceptions in situations where pleasure and displeasure can be measured at each step of the customer engagement (Suomala et al., 2012). It is also challenging a survey to capture the emotional reasons underlying customer preferences or decisions and NM have the capability to demonstrate that emotional and rational thinking co-exist, in fact, are co-dependent and build the emotional attachment (Fugate, 2007).
EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT M. Thomson, MacInnis, & Whan Park, (2005),
established a three-factor for emotional
attachment to the brand; affection, passion, and connection in a customer-brand relationship. This measurement was developed by the authors to measure the strength of customers' emotional attachments to brands. The existing attachments to the brand vary in strength; stronger attachments are associated with stronger feelings of connection, affection, love, and passion. This valid measurement would predict customers' commitment to a brand, such as their loyalty to that brand (M. Thomson et al., 2005). A 5
detailed study conducted found that customers' emotional attachments to a brand might estimate their commitment to the brand and their willingness to make financial sacrifices. Companies that likely fail to build customer loyalty due to their inability to create affectionate ties with their customers (Vlachos, Theotokis, Pramatari, & Vrechopoulos, 2010). Emotional attachment requires a personal history between the customer and the brand, whereas satisfaction may stem from only a few consumption experiences. In this context, consumers are most likely to fulfill their functional needs, their experiential needs, and their emotional needs (Park, Macinnis, & Priester, 2006).
BRAND ROMANCE The concept of brand romance is to explain the close character to brand loyalty and at the same time brand romance will correspond brand loyalty to understand more on emotional attachment towards brands. Brand romance as a construct to explain the customer - brand attraction and the main idea is an attraction in a romantic relationship, and thus the author simplifies it as “brand romance”. The idea of brand romance is more focusing on the mental state of a customer towards the brand, how customers react towards the brand and they feel close to the brands. Furthermore, the conception of brand romance is more reliable, valid and proximate explain loyalty. Three main characteristics of brand romance introduced by are; pleasure, arousal, and dominance (Patwardhan & Balasubramanian, 2011). As mentioned by the author, once the customer has high and strong positive effect on the brand, the brand caused high arousal, and the customer fully aware of the brand. This is called a response to emotional attachment from the customer towards the brand. From the study, they found that emotional attachment from attraction causes positive affect towards the brand. However, the different customer may have different impact and enjoyment of the brand romance towards the brand.
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BRAND LOVE The three components of love, according to the triangular theory, are an intimacy, passion, and commitment (Sternberg, 1986). Intimacy refers to closeness and connectedness, being happy together, and being able to rely on the partner. Passion involves romance, physical attraction, arousal, and needs such as self-esteem, nurturance, or self-actualization. Finally, decision/commitment refers to the shortterm decision to love someone and the will to maintain that relationship over the long term. When these three components exist, they strongly contribute to loyalty toward the object (Albert, Merunka, & ValetteFlorence, 2008). These three components will strongly contribute to loyalty and expressed toward the purchasing behavior (Ismail & Spinelli, 2012). The triangular theory of love emphasize on emotional connectedness between the person and the attached object and it defines people’s affectionate bonds with other people, objects, or brands as a multifaceted construct in which intimacy and passion are its core elements (Yim, Tse, & Chan, 2008).
CONCLUSIONS NM is a developmental model where the major thinking part of human activity, including emotion, takes place in the subconscious area that is below the levels of controlled awareness. To organization and marketers, NM is important because they can understand their customer intensely. Therefore, the study of subconscious mind is important in order for an organization to brand their service. NM is a business model that can demonstrate that customers understanding of themselves as it relates to decision making, which can give more information to the related parties such as service provider, policy makers and so on that lead to more intelligent business policies and legislation.
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