Cognitive Biases and Digital Neuromarketing
What exactly is neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing is a technique that uses neuroscience principles to understand consumer motivations in purchasing decisions and then uses this information to improve the performance of advertising campaigns and user experiences.
We are, after all, emotional beings!
To understand neuromarketing, it is necessary to understand the two decision-making systems demonstrated by a study conducted by Daniel Kahneman:
USED IN 95% OF CASES, SLOW THINKING is our brain’s action of providing shortcuts to provide us with quick answers. These shortcuts, however, can sometimes lead to errors such as cognitive bias. Neuromarketing exploits these errors to sell products by appealing to our emotions rather than our logical reasoning, which explains why our purchasing decisions are frequently emotional rather than rational.
Neuromarketing within the digital world
Due to the increased ability to collect and analyze consumer data easier than offline, neuromarketing has many applications in the digital world. Whether via surveys, onsite customer journey analysis, or analysis tools.
For example, using neuromarketing, it is possible to determine a person’s visual path when entering a website and the elements that capture their attention by analyzing :
· The most viewed areas (eye tracking)
· The areas with the most or least clicks (click-tracking)
· Mouse movements (scroll-tracking)
The use of neuromarketing through data collection can:
· Aid in the design or redesign of a website’s UX
· Optimize digital marketing strategies
· Increase an e-sales merchant’s
What are the cognitive biases that digital neuromarketing can take advantage of?
“A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make.” — Kendra Cherry, Psychology author and consultant
DECOY EFFECT:
The decoy effect is a strategy for influencing a consumer’s decision by presenting an additional option that appears less appealing than the other options.
This option diverts the consumer’s attention away from the option being sold, making it appear more appealing in comparison. This is a method of manipulating a consumer’s choices by exploiting their perceptions and emotions.
In this case : The €14.99 offer is the “lure”
Which means if this offer had not been available, the majority of consumers would have undoubtedly purchased offer 1.
However, for more consumers to choose offer 2, offer 3 is introduced as a decoy, i.e. an offer that is undesirable but makes offer 2 more desirable.
As can be seen, there isn’t much of a difference between offers 2 and 3, but the prices vary significantly.
So, with this offer 3, the e-merchant will gain more customers for offer 2, which was the primary goal.
DRAG EFFECT:
The drag effect (also known as the bandwagon effect) is a psychological phenomenon in which people tend to adopt views and behaviors that are perceived to be popular in a given society. This happens because people tend to believe that if the majority of people are doing something, it must be the right thing to do. This effect can be used to persuade customers to purchase a product or engage in behavior by demonstrating that many others are already doing so.
This bias is used by e-commerce websites that rely on reviews, such as Amazon. If you see a lot of positive reviews for a particular product, you will feel pressured to follow the majority’s opinion, and you will almost certainly end up purchasing that product.
An effect that some eCommerce companies can overcome by asking their buyers to:
Leave a review on the platform (sometimes in exchange for a reward)
To notify them of a problem in advance (e-shopper anticipation)
TikTok trends are a good example of this bias and its impact! Our brain is influenced, creating the desire to follow the trend
LOSS AVERSION EFFECT:
It is a cognitive bias referring to the tendency to avoid loss rather than maximize gain. A digital marketing technique that uses fear of missing out (FOMO) on an opportunity or special offer to entice consumers to make a purchase decision. This can be accomplished by using phrases like:
“don’t miss out on this limited-time offer,”
“stocks are limited,”
“only X hours left to get this deal”
In order to instil a sense of urgency in customers, encouraging them to buy quickly before it’s too late. This is an effective technique because we are more concerned with avoiding losses than with making gains.
So, which cognitive biases do you prefer? Have you ever been the target of digital neuromarketing?
Tell me in the comments!
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminating the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
