News
Brain Science: How Big Business Manipulates the Patterns of Thinking - all the Way to the Bank.
November 2nd, 2009
Consumers generally buy
products and services that focus on emotion, pleasure, visual stimuli, and
familiarity. This process happens quickly with little to no thinking. What neuromarketing researchers have found, is that when a consumer relates a particular brand with a particular "feeling," the result is a consumer who buys based on impulse. It is a
t this moment, when faced with
this message, that thinking skills become relevant and ultimately
important. This pleasure response
to a particular product can have massive implications on what a company,
political party or the government presents, produces and markets for a particular
consumer or group.
Many companies are taking
advantage of this new field of knowledge and performing their own research of
consumer response to their products.
For example:
- Cars. Diamler-Chrysler recently found that men's reactions to sportier car models activate the brain's reward centers, the same areas that activate in response to alcohol and drugs.
- Politics. Even the political parties are getting in on this brain-science. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles found that Republicans and Democrats react differently to campaign ads showing images of the September 11th terrorist attacks.
- Snacks. When researchers at Frito-Lay studied the buying behaviors of women, and found that relation-chips matter. Their earlier ad campaigns used the word "guilt" (even in the negative instances of "guilt-free" and "guiltless"), and consumers opted for other brands.
Reactions were much more positive to ads describing the chips as "healthy." The question is why? What's the difference between "guiltless" and "healthy"? It turns out that buyers associated the Frito's brand with guilt, even if that outcome was unintended. Marketers realized that the identity "guiltless" was quickly related to its other "guilt". Consumers' emotional response to the idea of guilt was so powerful, that they opted not to purchase these products as a result of this association. So Frito-Lay changed their marketing strategy so that it would make no relationship - absolutely none between Frito's and guilt (or guiltless or guilt-free). In turn, Frito's decided to identify "healthy" as their marketing campaign because the relationship between identity "healthy" and other "not-healthy," is not as clear for most consumers. What they discovered was, the reaction to positive emotional stimuli (such as the distinction "healthy") creates a 'feel-good' emotional response that can override ones ability to distinguish the other (not-healthy) in relationship to its identity. This cutting-edge research of neuromarketers showed this huge company how to manipulate relationships in their favor.
Companies are spending millions to understand how we think. Neuromarketing research tells them that, to make us spend, marketing efforts should manipulate our Patterns of Thinking (Distinctions, Sys tems, Relationships, and Perspectives). How can consumers avoid being manipulated by these implants? By using these same thinking skills (DSRP) as an inoculation to these subliminal messages. By utilizing these four thinking skills you can essentially over-ride this reactionary process by deconstructing an idea (in this case a message) and reach a well thought-out decision. We can either allow marketers to continue to make bank off of our inability to think, or we can teach thinking skills to the next generation of consumers and citizens.
Other resources:
- More information about the Patterns of Thinking Method can be found in the book, Thinking At Every Desk.
- Blog about inoculation to media manipulation.
- Another blog about media and thinking.
