Have you ever heard about Neuromarketing? 

If the answer is yes then good for you but if the answer is no then even better!

Today, we gonna learn a little bit of what Neuromarketing is about, some applications in real life as well as we gonna understand why it is beneficial for marketeers and corporations. I was really fascinated when i found out about it a couple of years ago and when i have time i wanna learn more and more and use it in real life as well as my job.

What is it?

Neuromarketing is a combination between marketing and neuroscience concepts. To be more exact it's the merging of brain responses with the marketing techniques either those are called advertising or branding. The two basic technologies behind Neuromarketing are 1) Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and 2) Electroencephalography (EEG) but there are a couple of more like facial coding,biometrics etc etc

Electroencephalography (EEG)

Electroencephalography (that comes from a Greek word!) is technique in which tests are conducted that evaluate the electrical activity in out brains. The cells inside our brains communicate through electrical impulses and with that test, we record the brain waves. If you have seen in movies they use during these tests some small discs (electrodes) that are attached to our heads and their role is to analyze those electrical signs and sent the data to a computer for further analysis. 

Other than Neuromarketing, EEG is performed to detect issues like, dementia, tumors,memory and sleep problems,strokes etc etc.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

I bet you have seen this one for sure in shows like Grey's Anatomy, It's the huge white like bed thing that patients get inside and this thing scans the hell out of our brain.More accurately, the way it works is by detecting with a powerful magnet the changes in blood oxygenation and flow that happens in response to neural activity. After that, some ''maps'' that show the activity in our brain occur in which we can see the parts of the brain that involved in a particular mental process.

Both EEG and fMRI are trying to understand how and what we think about certain things and in our case certain products. Some of the parts of our brains that Neuromarketers wanna uncover are 

• Nucleus Accumbens: it's the pleasure part of our brain.
• Insula: the part that anticipates and avoids painful stimuli
• Hippocampus: part of the brain that helps our memory
• Mesial Prefrontal Cortex: part of the brain that triggers disappointment when an upcoming reward never comes and obtained 

Examples In Real Life

The Pepsi-Coke Challenge is one of the brightest examples of Neuromarketing in my opinion. What really happened is that in a form of a blind taste test in different locations and in set up of a single table and 2 cups people had to simply say what they prefer the most. The one cup had Pepsi and the other Coke and the results were really outstanding. The majority of people and in other words their pleasure part in their brains preferred Pepsi over Coke while when they had both of the options known to them they they chose Coke. Clearly as far as it concerns the brain, people liked Pepsi more but when they knew what they were drinking Coke was their first option as they liked the brand name more.

Color: Using colors isn't as simple as we all believe as different colors can trigger different emotions and influences us in different ways. One of the most known and successful examples of the color's usage is Coca Cola with it's red color that gave Christmas (or not for the believers :P) a whole different meaning. Some meanings and brand usages of colors are:

• Yellow: Positive,sunny,elegant and eye catching Yellow is a color that used by many heavy machinery companies
• Green: Positive,marks rebirth and nature and it's the color of Starbucks 
• Blue:Positive as well as the color of trust and friendship Blue is a color that even the National Health Service (NHS) of UK and Facebook took a liking! 
• Black: A powerful color that is now have a more sophisticated,elegant and expensive use and it's the color of Guinness beer!
• White: Purity and simplicity are White's top noticeable things as well as a more ''futuristic'' approach. Apple use that color a lot in their products either they are laptops,tablets or earplugs 

Advertising: Now the marketeers and corporations aren't just spending money on random hypothesis but they can actually find out the best solution beforehand. With fMRI they can compare advertising campaigns, see which one triggers the most and find out the one that will gain more engagement and acceptance from the customers. The one with the highest amount of brain activity in a specific area that each corporation wants will be the winner.

Decision Paralysis: During a jam experiment a couple of years ago in which there was a table with over 20 jams and another with 6. As you may have guessed more and more people went over to the one with more choices and fewer to the table with the 6 jams but contrary to the general belief more people actually bought a jar from the 6 jar table than the other. Giving so many information into the consumers brain can lead them just to stay away from all these options till something else ''catches their eyes''.

Career Titles,Salaries And Employers 

In order to become a Neuromarketer i think just a bachelor isn't enough but it's the base of everything. Appropriate bachelors for those that wanna work at the field of Neuromarketing are Marketing,Psychology,Neuroscience and Statistics. The career titles are Neuromarketers, Neuromarketing Consultants,Market Analysts,Client Managers and Advertisers ( in a way) and their expected salaries according to U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics are varied from 60.000$ to 190.000$.

In case you are wondering who employs for Neuromarketing the answer is companies with a lot of money. To buy a fMRI machine someone has to pay over 2-3 millions and to gather people to conduct the research needed can cost 10.000-20.000$ and in that we have to add the salaries of our employees too. Some companies that use Neuromarketing are Google, Microsoft, Pepsi,Ebay, The Weather Channel  and as you can see we those are really really big corporation with vast audience and the amount of money needed for this actions.

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Sources (some sources are inside the post as links)
http://www.exhibitionworld.co.uk/2017/11/03/neuromarketing-will-change-exhibition-experience/
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311908.2017.1320858
https://www.healthline.com/health/eeg#procedure
https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-functional-magnetic-resonance-imaging-fmri/
https://edgylabs.com/four-companies-using-neuromarketing