By Rita Okoye

Senior Research Consultant, Dr. Chika Ezeugwu has said that given the complexity of human decision-making and the constantly evolving market dynamics, brands need to adapt effective strategies to improve prediction accuracy and take into account, consumer preferences, technologies, and even pop culture trends.

Amidst this dilemma, Neuromarketing has emerged as a panacea to better understand consumer behaviour, by making use of scientifically informed marketing strategies.

Also, a Postdoctoral fellow at the Mind Brain and Behaviour Interfaculty initiative at Harvard University, Dr. Ezeugwu noted that Neuromarketing is crucial to understanding how human emotions and thoughts drive consumer decision making, and how social norms and beliefs influence consumer behaviour.

Ezeugwu believes that neuromarketing will help brands to develop marketing strategies that prioritise the cognitive reasoning of consumers, to identify patterns and trends.

“Over the years, business organisations have spent millions of dollars on marketing campaigns to influence favourable consumer buying behaviour, but the successes of these campaigns have been limited even with increased budgets due to changing dynamics in consumerism.

“Adopting neuromarketing tools in emerging markets will help organisations understand consumers’ affective, cognitive, and behavioural characteristics and how they mentally navigate through marketing stimuli. It is important for organisations to rethink marketing campaigns in emerging markets,” he added.

He stressed that neuromarketing emphasises the need to better understand and target the abstract cognitive processes for better consumer observable behaviour, and applying this knowledge to evolving marketing campaigns.

“The essence of neuromarketing based on this model is to link consumers’ thoughts and emotions and their influences on observable actions of intentional decisions and actual purchase. It is believed that observable behaviour results from abstract cognitive processes, and actual behaviour occurs when there is congruence between mental processes and observable stimuli.”

Dr. Ezeugwu argues that neuromarketing tools have become easily accessible for brands looking to take advantage of them, adding that it is a very worthy investment with massive potential: “Although there are arguments that some neuroscientifc tools are expensive, the rapid dynamic developments in technology have eradicated this challenge, thereby making most of the neuroscientifc tools accessible. Investment in these types of marketing techniques provides better marketing dividends than its cost; most executive function assessment tools are easily accessible.

“Consequently, this provides an efficient and reliable avenue to neuroscientifcally explore neural pathways of consumers’ decision-making in emerging markets,” he noted.

He believes that a neuroscientific approach to understanding consumer behaviour is highly effective as it provides neutral-level evidence of consumer behaviours towards marketing stimuli, and reconceptualises the operationalisation of consumers’ underlying processes for successful marketing campaigns.

“The application of neuromarketing eradicates systematic and methodological limitations common with most traditional means of exploring consumer responses by providing a neural understanding of how consumers will behave when deciding about consumption and what will make them behave or change behaviour in the same, similar, or different circumstances,” said Dr. Ezeugwu.

There is a need for brands to rethink how marketing strategies are executed in emerging markets, and Dr. Ezeugwu has advocated for a blend of both the traditional methods and neuromarketing.

“Using a combination of both approaches – traditional means and neuromarketing, will be beneficial for emerging markets because of their cultural and economic characteristics. That is, data from self-report could be substantiated or refuted when compared to evidence from neuromarketing approaches. In this case, one strengthens the other and provides robust justifications for marketing campaign decisions.”

Dr. Ezeugwu wants more researchers, managers, marketers, and organisations to acknowledge how important it is to adapt neuroscientific methods to their marketing approach in the digital age, and then take it further to start applying it in their marketing strategy: “Since marketing is essential to business growth, understanding the executive function marketing pathways will provide robust marketing strategies, especially in emerging markets.”

“By identifying cognitive structures and their specific functions related to how they can affect consumers’ reaction to marketing campaigns, future research can focus on examining the cognitive processes, and challenges consumers can face in making sense of marketing campaigns,” Dr. Ezeugwu added.