NEUROMARKETING: AN INCOMPLETE INVESTIGATION INTO HOW BUYERS BUY

Because so much of our thought occurs in the unconscious, traditional research methods that mine the surface are likely to miss many of the factors that influence consumer behavior. Bridging the gap between mind and behavior is thus one of the key challenges that face marketers today. Cognitive neuroscience now offers us a means to bridge that gap.”

Michael Brammer, BSc (Biochem), PhD
Chairman, Neurosense Limited

Within the past 4 years, there has been an apparent revolution in the sales field: the addition of neurosciences and modern technology into the world of the search for strategies that will influence buyer’s buying habits.

Indeed: through scientific experiments, through the ‘modern study’ of the brain (including brain imaging research) researchers tell us that we now know, definitively, just exactly how buyers make their decisions and how sellers must communicate accordingly. And, we are told, if we do the right experiments, we can create marketing vehicles that will encourage buyers to buy from us.

These new studies have been fueled by the understanding (some say fear) that buyers have more control now than ever before. Led by the availability of information and comparators on the net, the consumer is now a person to be coddled and sought after, rather than manipulated and tamed. Indeed, it is now commonly recognized that:

1. consumers have free choice – over and above any manipulative tactics in sales and marketing initiatives - and exercise that right;

2. the ‘lizard brain’, as neuromarketers are calling it, is the emotional part of the brain that consumers use to decide, given that purchasing decisions are emotional;

3. marketing – if targeted correctly using the newly available data - can influence the buyer’s brain to achieve its goals better than any marketing strategies we’ve been able to develop until now.

Obviously, one would then assume, all we’d have to do to be even more successful would be to figure out, code, and replicate these ‘deeply rooted human needs’ in a way that is specific to our product, and manage the 'lizard brain' so we can have our way with it.

And that is precisely what this entire new field aims to do: first do the research to unearth the right data from the roots of the unconscious (not to mention target this in the right demographic), to highlight needs and pain, and then figure out how to influence them.

The field is now laced with assertions from well-known researchers that back up the theories of why and how the ‘lizard brain’ is the answer to this new new thing:

“ …people have no idea why they’re doing what they are doing. They have no idea, so they’re going to try to make up something that makes sense. How can I decode this kind of behavior which is not a word? My theory is very simple: the reptilian always wins (the emotional brain. SDM). I don’t care what you’re going to tell me intellectually. I don’t care. Give me the reptilian. Why? It always wins.”

Dr. Clotaire Rapaille in NeuroMarketing: Emergence of a New Business Discipline.

“…the sale will get made when the rep masters the …. objective of tapping into the customer’s emotions. ..we buy emotionally, so recognizing that fact gives us more information that we can use…. Using the latest neuroeconomics is using solid knowledge…”

Paul Cherry, Senior VP at Performance Based Results in a recent Selling Power Magazine article.

NeuroMarketing presupposes there is a specific way that the brain goes about making decisions that can be applied to influencing buyers. The underlying concept brings the basic tenant of conventional sales to new heights: that PAIN is the driver of buyer’s buying decisions, and that buyers buy emotionally and unconsciously, eventually needing data to justify their emotional decision.

ASSUMPTIONS AND BIASES

The first question I ask in re the above premises are: what about a buyer’s criteria? Values? Beliefs? What about the current system/environment they live/work within, and what about the people, policies and politics that have created and maintained the status quo until now…. How will those be redefined and reconfigured when the new choice enters the existent system? And, what has stopped them from solving this 'pain' until now? If they lived with this 'pain' yesterday, they will most likely be capable of living with it again tomorrow (thereby putting into serious question whether or not it should be called 'pain' ), your solution and their 'lizard brain' aside.

My concerns center around what I recognize as obvious: that the assumptions involved in the brain imaging experiments (that buyers decide emotionally and justify rationally) have led to a bias in the results. In my mind, researching how buyers choose one product over another carries a fatal flaw and gaping omission: the system that the decisions need to get made within are not being tracked:

How do buyers know when, if, and with whom they will be able to make a decision that will be adopted by their decision partners?
What are the historic, criteria-based precursors to the present decision, and how do the past results of similar decisions influence the current decision? A need, or problem, doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
What has stopped this decision from being made until now? And how will the need for a decision fit into the future criteria that will need to be managed? .
How will the results of the new decision need to be addressed to ensure that the status quo will not be disrupted?

And, if they know the answers to these annoying questions, what do buyers do once they are led to the decision that would allegedly rid them of their pain? Does it ensure that they actually make the purchase? If so, then neuromarketing will work 100% of the time.

But it doesn’t. Neuromarketing may discover a preferred demographic and undoubtedly is superior to conventional sales/marketing approaches at influencing a buying decision. But it doesn’t manage the entire system of decision making that buyers operate out of, as it doesn’t account for criteria, including beliefs, values, fears, hopes, relationships, unspoken politics, historic relational or market issues, and a raft of hidden issues that have created and maintain the status quo.

Indeed, there are other sets of decisions buyers must make before they can even consider the possible decisions that neuromarketing techniques encourage: buyers have to manage the full range of internal hidden, unique, and idiosyncratic systems issues that support the status quo before they will consider doing anything different. And this is where neuromarketing falters: it doesn’t address these systems issues, and considers the decision making process in a vacuum that researches the apparent buying decisions related to the product being studied.

SYSTEMS MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO

Let me address, here, my conclusions on the above questions:

Choosing the correct product is but a small part of the range of necessary decision factors.
The same system that created the status quo (including the identified problem or need) will maintain that problem until all surrounding systems issues that created it, are managed to ensure no disruption will occur with change.
Whatever is keeping the status quo (and therefore, the identified problem) in place, will continue to do so, until/unless there is a systemic decision to do something different that will incorporate the necessary pieces of the entire system into the change/solution.
Systems won’t change unless they know that there will be an integration of all necessary elements (people, policies, politics) that have created and maintained the status quo into the change. Systems avoid disruption and seek homeostasis, and will eschew change until it can figure out what homeostasis will look like.

Buyers have a range of systems decisions they need to make in order to ensure that the environment that will hold the fruits of the new decision (product, service, etc.) are ready to accept the change that something new will entail. And neuromarketing is so steeped in the original thinking of conventional sales that they bias the data from the outset. Here is a quote from the site of SalesBrain, a highly successful neuromarketing company, explaining how they use software and survey tools to get insight into how buyers decide:

“SalesBrain surveyed 60 potential purchasers around the world by asking questions such as, What keeps you awake at night? and, What makes your life miserable? They received a 50% response rate and the survey captured the words and expressions of the respondents describing their greatest concerns. Having 30 detailed responses to open-ended questions is extremely powerful… and gave his clients information about the concerns of their potential customers that they hadn’t even considered.”

Notice the bias around pain. Notice the omission of data around criteria, beliefs, values. Notice the bias in the questions and how they vastly diminish the capability to discover the full set of decision criteria.

If we use Facilitative Questions (questions that direct the brain to respond to those specific criteria that would enable it to open up new possibilities while maintaining its own criteria and belief systems given the decisions that have held the status quo in place) buyers would have the capacity to recognize and highlight a more robust data set to choose with:

How would you know when you would be ready to X?
What has stopped you from fixing that problem until now, and how will you go about fixing that problem if the issues that developed it are still prevalent? How would you go about managing your status quo to make change possible and acceptable?
What would you need to know or do differently in order to make it possible for your new (decision) to enter your system without disruption? And who would need to be involved to support that integration?

I contend that once a buyer knows how to manage the full range of systems issues that will support the change/disruption that a new decision will bring to the status quo (that designed the problem to begin with), no decision will be made. And currently, neuromarketing doesn’t handle this at all.

THE SYSTEM OF DECISION MAKING

No decisions get made within a vacuum, unless they are quick, survival-based decisions such as running from a bear. If there is a choice between one thing and another, between one decision and another, there is an entire network of internal – and very rational - decisions that must be made. These are based on historic beliefs, closely held criteria, decisions that have created the status quo and involve other people, or important historic decisions that will affect people that have agreed with the current fact pattern.

As sellers, we know it’s difficult to replace whatever has served as the ‘fix’ until we appeared, even if that ‘fix’ were outdated and suboptimal. That’s because there is an entire system of people, rules, values, feelings, etc. that surround that ’fix’ that would need to be managed before change could take place.

So whether it’s a small purchase or a large purchase, finding out where the buyer’s pain is is moot, until they know how to manage the system within which the new fix will sit. I contend that because sellers and marketers have had such a difficult time in mining data about a buyer’s internal criteria, they have believed that decisions are made emotionally. I believe this is an error. While the ultimate means to decide between (two) things might seem emotional, there is indeed a very complex system of decision criteria that must be managed at the front end of the decision that leads to the final choice. I contend that we make decisions very rationally and systemically.

In my studies and teaching, I have discovered that there is actually a complex sequence of universal, criteria-based decision-making factors through which all decisions get made (again, except automatic decisions like running from danger). These can be influenced by leading the brain through the sequence that includes the historic decisions that have created and maintained the status quo and without which won't do anything different. These decision points include the full range of the system's highly valued (and unconscious) values and decision criteria, and no change can occur until these systemic decisions are managed.

In all of the research on neuromarketing or behavioral sciences that I read, nowhere was there a conversation about criteria or about the actual system the brain must go through before it's willing to make a change and make a new decision. From what I can tell, the brain scans they are using merely study the brain as it interfaces with an object, usually a visual, and assume that this brain activity operates in a vacuum.

But it doesn’t. At the point when neuromarketing adopts research and brain scans on the actual sequence of decision-making and change adoption (as I lay out in Buying Facilitation: the new way to sell that expands and influences decisions at www.buyingfacilitation.com and includes: Where are you, how did you get there, and what can you see is missing from the full range of internal elements that maintain the status quo; How can you fix the problem with a known resources; What internal systems issues must be managed before anything new can be added to the current system so disruption will not ensue) they will then be able to say that they have the means to influence decision making. Until then, this new new thing is nothing more than the new buzz word that sellers will flock to in hopes of increasing sales.

ABOUT MORGEN FACILITATIONS, INC.

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