I watched an Olivier Roland’s video and I learned good stuff.

Let’s see what neuroscience found on things that influence people to buy.

The book of Michel Badoc and Anne-Sophie Bayle-Touroulou « Le neuro-consommateur » (in french)  helps us better to understand this.

It’s a book that has been written for other researchers and academics. This is why this book is very interesting for entrepreneurs and consumers.

Here are the elements from this book to boost your marketing.

Until now, marketing and communication are based on the rational purchasing decisions and perceptions of advertising messages by the consumer. But neuroscience shows us that a huge part of our actions come from the subconscious part of our brain.

For A.K Pradeep  and Martin Lindstrom , only 15% of purchasing decision are rational. Current marketing studies limited in the accuracy of customer behavior. What customers say doesn’t always match what they do. Responses collected during a market study can be influenced by context, which disturbs responses. With neuroscience, we can directly communicate with the brain to try to improve marketing.

Here the elements found in neuroscience on the unconscious behavior of consumers.

• Age et gender

• Memory

• Emotions and desire in the decision

• 5 sens

• Cognitive ergonomics, pricing, distribution and sales.

• Subliminals relationships

• Community and social networks.

Let’s go, we’ll see that in detail. We’ll start with age and gender because these 2 create behaviors and attitudes, sometimes, difficult to understand by a person who doesn’t belong to the same category.

Age

Reptilian brain

It’s the center of instincts and the satisfaction of primary needs. This mainly affects young children. They respect the leader who is the mother or the father but also the strongest person who can protect them in case of external danger.

Limbic brain

It’s the center of stress emotions, instinctive behavior and memory. This mainly influences teenagers. They are mainly attracted by new brands / products and original fashions that can distinguish or oppose them to adult fashions.

Teenagers are often interested in causes or subjects with a lot of emotions : social, humanitarian, ecological, fair trade, etc. They prefer emotional communication over rational information.

neocortex,

It’s the center of anticipation and decisions. This mainly affects adults.

With internet, we can see several big differences in the generational behavior of consumers. There are Digital Native and Digital Immigrants and these 2 categories require different approaches.

Digital Natives

These are the people who grew up with computers, smartphone and internet. They prefer to have jerky information without verb and without object complement. They can read in parallel information on several different media. They don’t need to structure their thoughts and they can have a random read mode. They feel emotions much more with colors and designs rather than structured text. They want things to go fast.

Digital Immigrants

They prefer a linear processing of information. They like the text’s logic. They wish to receive the information in a slow way with consistency in the structure. They want to keep their privacy and are wary of the information’s distribution on internet. They sometimes want to work alone.

Gender

There is a distinct difference between the behavior of female and male consumers.

Female

The left hemisphere of the brain is more developed in women and they’re subject to the hormones influence. We can see more of this phenomenon when a woman becomes a mother. A woman like to communicate more that a man, she likes to talk and be listened to. She needs shares her ideas, feelings and emotions.

She’s very well oriented in time. A woman is less emotional than a ma but she is more sensitive because she has the sens of smell, hearing and touch more developed than a man.

Male

The right hemisphere of the brain is more developed in man and they’re subject to the influence of testosterone. A man is more emotional than a woman, but he expresses less his emotions. He likes action and competition. He’s very well oriented in space, which allows him to find shortcuts. The man’s view is very developed and is eroticized. This explains why the man is attracted by the nude, jewelry, makeup and clothes.

For these reasons, it’s easier to mee a man’s expectations compared to a woman’s expectations.

Differences

Male

As you can see, man primarily uses his view to select a product or service that he can use to show his strength and seductive power. He likes offers that give short-term profits. He prefers simple and direct communication. He prefers images rather than text. Price is more important for the man than for the woman.

Female

A woman is more complex in her expectations. She processes information in a way that is both rational and emotional. A woman is not attracted by nudity. She is attracted by a neat person with harmonious clothes and neat hands. In the case of a salesman, a woman has no preference for a man of a woman. This is influenced by several elements : voice, smell, facial expression, capacity to listen and quality of answers of the salesman.

A women prefers written and documented communication. She likes social media because she can express her ideas and meet people who share her points of view. She filters rational messages through her emotions. She likes positive communications. Before selecting a product/service, she will compare it with competitors and get information with her friends, co-workers and other people with experience.

A woman is less impulsive than a man even if a purchase can serve as an antistress. For a woman, the touch’s quality and the smell can influence a purchase like clothes.

This is the end of the 1^st part.

Share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.

-Steph