http://cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/money/science_shopping/
Corporations are going to new lengths to probe the minds of consumers.
A company in Atlanta is scanning people's brains with MRIs, in an effort to record our subconscious thoughts about products and ads.
The process has been dubbed neuromarketing. It's being hailed as a giant leap in the science of selling. But the technique is also raising some concerns.
For people like Cathy Denison, the marketplace is a jungle to be conquered
For corporations that want to sell us stuff, it's the shopper's mind that's the jungle -- a territory to be mapped.
In a hospital in Atlanta, researchers are trying to do that mapping. They're paying people to lie inside MRI machines and look at pictures of products while the machine snaps images of their brains.
The Brighthouse Institute for Thought Sciences claims it's closing the gap between business and science -- with the goal of getting us to behave the way corporations want us to.
"What it really does is give unprecedented insight into the consumer mind. And it will actually result in higher product sales or in brand preference or in getting customers to behave the way they want them to behave," company executive Adam Koval told Marketplace.
Back in Toronto, we caught up with Cathy Denison as she was trying on a fur coat.
"I look like a movie star. You've got to have an attitude when you wear a coat like that. That's the kind of thing, I don't need it, but I want it."
That's exactly what neuro-marketers want to do -- strengthen our emotional bonds with products.
In its early stages
Advertising veteran, Allan Middleton, teaches marketing at York University. He says neuromarketing is in its early stages -- and he's mostly skeptical about it can do.
"Theoretically, if you could possibly not only understand how people respond in a laboratory situation to a buying stimulus, then it will certainly help marketers forecast behavior. Well, if it works -- which by the way I don't think it will -- I mean, you get to 1984, and more importantly, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World."
Middleton doesn't think there's one magic technique -- or image -- that will compel us to buy something because there are so many products and messages competing for our attention. Still, neuromarketing is attracting some corporations with a lot money to spend.
Brighthouse's Adam Koval won't say which companies are interested.
"We can't actually talk about the specific names of the companies, but they are global consumer product companies. Right now, they would rather not be exposed. We have been kind of running under the radar with a lot of the breakthrough technology."
Troubling possibilities
The possiblity that neuromarketing may work troubles Toronto psychologist Will Cupchik. He treats a growing number of people with shopping disorders.
"The potential for good and the potential for ill are both huge here. I don't know what we will call brainwashing, but until we come up with a better term, I would suggest it's at least a kissing cousin."
"That's completely unfounded. It has nothing to do with controlling consumer thoughtSnothing to do with manipulating consumer thought. All we can do is observe and learn," Brighthouse's Koval says. He adds his research is aimed at making ads more effective in helping consumers either buy or become more loyal to a brand.
Marketers have been observing us for decades and sharpening their persuasive techniques. They have used everything from focus groups and dream therapy to skin tests. Using science to map the unconscious mind of consumers is the latest trick and it has some ivy league backing.
Neuromarketing was born at Harvard University. In the late 1990s, marketing professor Gerry Zaltman and his associate began scanning people's brains for corporations. He's stopped that work now, and he's concentrating on another method to probe the subconscious mind of consumers.
Along with neuromarketing, Zaltman has patented a technique -- called ZMET -- which uses pictures to help uncover deeply held thoughts and the metaphors they trigger.
"Ninety-five per cent or more of all cognition, all thinking, including emotion, occurs below levels of awareness, so the big challenge is: How do we surface what's going on in the unconscious?" Zaltman asks.
Zaltman's technique isn't revolutionary -- it's a refinement of other psychological marketing tools. But he's popular. His clients include GM, Proctor and Gamble, and Coca Cola. In Canada, the Royal Bank and Molson's are using ZMET -- and Canadian Tire used it to help develop a recent ad campaign.
Companies won't talk
Companies didn't want to talk to us about ZMET -- and it remains a secret who's using neuromarketing. That doesn't surprise Allan Middleton.
"Some of these techniques are controversial, because they are trying to get at people's less-than-totally conscious and less than totally rational response."
Zaltman's goal is to use ZMET to make the most emotionally compelling ads, then test them by scanning people's brains. But he doesn't like to talk too much publicly about his groundbreaking work on neuromarketing.
"We found there was a lot of promise in the use of this technique, that we have a long way to go to fully understand how to do it, but it nevertheless is very promising."
He knows that promise is frightening to some.
"People are naturally apprehensive that it might be used to do harm, especially if the nature of the technology isn't understood, and this has some spooky qualities to it that are unjustified but still real."
York University's Allan Middleton says consumers are not as naive about advertising as they used to be.
"Unlike the 50s and 60s, we know that marketers are trying to manipulate us. That is no suprise to anybody any longer. The younger you get in the population, the more they totally understand that, the more people kind of accept it, and it's because they know ultimately, they are still in control."
Middleton concedes there are vulnerable groups -- impressionable children, and adults with low self-esteem -- who can be compelled to buy things to feel older, younger, more attractive, more loved.
"If I feel a little bit crummy or a little bit down my fallback strategy is shopping," Cathy Denison said.
But she doesn't have a problem with neuromarketing -- or any other subconscious probing.
"I think if they can find a way to help us find a way into that magic little feeling that shopping can give you -- if you do it right and you get the right thing and you don't spend too much money, hats off to them. Thank you. I think it's a service."