Neuroscience vs. neuromarketing: what’s the difference?

Why practice (and context) matter for understanding theoretical results

Even people who work in the field aren’t always clear on how neuroscience and neuromarketing differ in breadth, scope and meaning.

I’d like to share a case presented at the most recent neuromarketing conference, held in London in March 2017 and organized by the NMSBA (Neuromarketing Science and Business Association).

The two fields (“neuroscience” and “neuromarketing”) can complement each other, but anyone using them to support business decisions needs to understand the limits of each from the start.

Without getting into a technical or theoretical debate, let me illustrate the difference in very practical terms with a real case that shows just how different the two fields are.

A real case

The case involved a German tea maker that wanted to update and modernize its very traditional packaging, after more than 80 years on the market.

A specialized design agency developed two new packaging options, both approved in advance by the tea maker’s own marketing team.

To back up the choice and reduce the risk, the board wanted such an important decision to also be supported by the most advanced techniques available.

So the company hired a neuroscience firm with access to the right equipment and resources for this kind of assessment, including a comparison against the existing packaging.

The tea maker expected neuroscience to point to the packaging option best able to convey the attributes of the new positioning, based on the most scientifically sound evidence.

The packaging needed to signal a younger brand, modernity and innovation, without losing the associations consumers had built with the product and the brand over time.

The results

The packaging options were tested and compared both explicitly and implicitly, including with functional MRI (fMRI), and the results clearly showed that one of the new designs stood out, the same one the marketing team had picked.

That gave everyone considerable confidence in the decision, since the results also pointed scientifically and technically to the same answer.

It’s worth remembering that with “conventional” techniques, such as qualitative and quantitative research, results often conflict to some degree and call for a more subjective interpretation, which adds uncertainty for decision-makers and for the research agency.

In this case, the decision was made, the new packaging approved, the investment made and the products placed on supermarket shelves, with high hopes for the results.

The surprise

To everyone’s surprise and bewilderment, sales dropped unexpectedly and inexplicably, month after month, despite all the investment and the initial confidence in the decision.

The managers grew even more desperate. They weren’t sure what to do next, but they knew they had to understand what had caused sales to collapse.

So they hired a new firm, this time a neuromarketing agency, starting with a review of the entire packaging evaluation process.

A second look

With no doubts left about that process, the agency then looked at the context and the purchase process, observing how people normally buy the product in supermarkets, one of the most important sales channels.

Filming a young woman (under 35, working full time, mother of two small children) doing her grocery shopping with her kids in tow proved particularly decisive in understanding the problem.

Cranky children, a shopper with very little time to choose and none of the “ideal” rational deliberation in front of the shelves were all familiar scenes to most people, and they helped explain the poor sales.

It became clear that the shopper’s choice of brand for each item on her list was almost always made in a split second, apparently with the goal of getting the job done as quickly as possible.

Familiarity

One of the crucial factors in the shopping process was the consumer’s “familiarity” with the product, or, in this case, with its packaging.

That “familiarity” came from recognizing the manufacturer’s brand, its signature colors and its logo: in other words, the look of a package consumers already knew well.

The problem was that the new packaging had almost nothing in common with the old one, in either colors or graphics, despite the positive neuroscience results.

In other words, for all the strengths the tests had found in the new packaging, consumers no longer connected the product they knew with the new package on the shelf.

Many shoppers left the store thinking the product was out of stock, without bothering to look more carefully, perhaps because of time pressure, impatient kids or the rush to get home.

So, unable to find what they were “looking for,” shoppers ended up buying a “similar” product from a competitor, right there on the same shelf alongside the other brands in the category.

The solution

Once the problem at the point of sale had been identified, the manufacturer went back to its packaging options and chose one that, although it hadn’t scored best in the neuroscience tests, kept more of the elements that let consumers connect it to the old brand.

After that, tea sales returned to expected levels and won back the market share lost to competitors.

The takeaway is in no way a criticism of neuroscience or its techniques. It’s a reminder that neuromarketing, and what it reveals, needs to be part of the picture too.

And the role of conventional market and opinion research techniques, such as “ethnography,” “in-depth interviews” or even “product clinics,” shouldn’t be forgotten. They still play an important part in this kind of analysis.