How neuroscience is reshaping India's marketing strategy

Elon Musk's N1 implant, introduced to facilitate the operation of a device simply by intentionally inserting it into the brain, shocked many and revealed how seemingly exotic neuroscience could become practical and commercially viable. This made them aware of whether they were being used for purpose. Implants may be an outlier in the field of neuroscience, but today, what is common and commonplace is mapping the brain to understand and predict human responses using data and real-world insights. is. This covers everything from why life insurance buyers typically stop paying premiums after their first two years to whether online ads can be created to ensure consumers hit the “buy” button. It is used in India to solve the above problem.

Tanusree Dutta, a faculty member at IIM Ranchi, said that neuroscientific methods allow us to understand the relationship between the brain and behavior in a scientific or objective manner. “Advertising, product design, aesthetics, store layout, use of music, attention-grabbing colors, nudges, etc. can all be tested using neuroscience tools to ensure their effectiveness before launch,” she says. added.

Anil Pillai, CEO of neuroscience firm Tharani Consulting, said survey-based research has limitations because responses are filtered and subject to cognitive biases. Neuromarketing says that impressions, and therefore decisions, are made at the emotional, instinctive, and unconscious level of the human mind.

Implicit association testing is a simple demonstration of unconsciously probing deeply ingrained beliefs and biases that may be excluded by participants in survey-based research. Rapid type tests leave little time for considered responses that can eliminate bias.

Neuroscience-based market research provides reliable and hard data, says Pillai. Instead of surveys, neuroscience uses a variety of tools to directly obtain information about how the brain is influenced and what decisions it makes.

More than 15 years ago, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that advertisements reminiscent of the 9/11 terrorist attacks caused fear in voters, but that Republican and Democratic voters had different brain activity. Neuroscience has made a breakthrough in the United States. Neuromarketing experts say using FACS (Facial Action Coding System) will make Indian opinion polls more accurate and better probe voters' minds in today's highly polarized ideological politics. It has said. FMRI would be prohibitively expensive in India, Pillai said.

Enabling the device

What has made neuroscience possible in India and around the world is rapid advances in bioinstruments, some of which have become cheaper and easier to use. Nowadays, wearable watches can provide a lot of health information. According to Puneet Garg, co-founder of Story Prediction, the eye tracker, a classic neuroscience tool, is now available on Amazon.

A typical neuromarketing tool is an adaptation of a device originally intended for medical diagnostic purposes. These can be broadly divided into those that measure electrical impulses in the brain and those that generate heat maps by other means. The former set includes electroencephalography (EEG), quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG), etc.

Eye-tracking devices can help measure attention, attention span, and changes in attention. Anything that catches your attention in your mind is further processed. An eye tracker generates a heat map depending on where your eye is focused. For example, a heatmap of a web page is generated by mouse movements. However, mouse movements can also be used to scroll, and not everyone who is paying attention to something of interest will click. Therefore, such heatmaps can be inaccurate. With time-stamped jewelry video ads, eye trackers can see exactly where their interest is heading: products, models, discounts, buy buttons, and more. Using this feedback, vendors can fine-tune their ads to gravitate consumers towards hitting the buy button.

Thermal imaging cameras help capture temperature changes when a person is exposed to some situation or stimulus. Electroencephalogram tests were intended to detect brain tumors and measure health parameters such as whether treatment drugs are working. The wearable electroencephalogram detects 21 points in the brain, including pleasure points, fear points, and pain points. It measures brain waves, usually beta waves, while filtering alpha and gamma waves.

The reptilian brain is the seat of joy, fear, and other emotions. Arousal here can be tracked by brain waves. If the EEG detects that the ad a person is viewing touches that person's pleasure points, neuromarketers conclude that the ad influenced the subconscious mind in favor of the product. According to neuroscience, such influences influence product purchase decisions.

Skin conductance measurement devices were originally used for muscle testing applications in physical therapy and sports training, but have been applied in marketing to detect emotional arousal by measuring skin secretions.

Skin conductance devices are probably the cheapest, but also the least efficient. EEG is up to 75% efficient, although eye trackers are more efficient. The more powerful the equipment, the higher the price. Experts can come up with the best choices and sample sizes so that the confidence level in the results is 95% or higher. In some cases, multiple devices may be used in combination.

India's neuroscience scene has an advanced workforce that includes multinational companies that use these tools for business decisions, market research consultants specializing in the subject, and institutions such as IITs and IIMs that provide research support. Digital companies exist. A world with forward-thinking companies remains a “scarce” world, Pillai says, but one with a bright future ahead.

Neuromarketing can push the boundaries, but the problem is cost. Devi Prasanna, AVP of Digital Marketing at Loan Tap, says that large companies, which are big consumers of TV spots, are using neuromarketing in their advertising. For others, there are many tools that offer similar or greater benefits and are even cheaper. For example, in the digital space, tools like YouTube's Brand Lift study can track insights into the effectiveness of your ads. Neuromarketing is a predictive model, he added, but now there are ads on connected TVs that use UTM to place his QR code to track who takes an action.

The immediate application of neuroscience in India was advertising and marketing, but the problem was that the application was reactive, providing feedback for the future, Garg says. His company uses large-scale language models (LLMs) to assess whether an ad or even a movie will be a hit by evaluating the power and potential of a script to maintain emotional engagement with the audience. He is developing an AI-based product that predicts what will happen.

Pillai acknowledges the cost factor. But the applications of neuroscience are much broader than just advertising and marketing, he added. It helps solve difficult business problems that require hard, reliable data and have significant benefits.

Indian consumer behavior

Although neuromarketing has been around for decades in the West, it has picked up steam in India over the past decade, Ms. Dutta says. Now, neuroscience has revealed many aspects of Indian consumer behavior at a visceral level.

A study by Final Mile, a behavioral science consultancy, found that most of the people killed by trespassers crossing railway tracks in Mumbai were young men, not old men or even women. Furthermore, the number of fatalities was higher between stations rather than at stations, and they occurred mainly during the day. The study concluded that this was an example of male bravado and that the train driver's honking had no effect. Additionally, the intruder underestimated the danger, as the human mind typically estimates the speed of entry of large objects to be 40% slower. A successful solution implemented by The Final Mile included posting photos of the bodies of actual men killed in trespassing to push the fear button of trespassers. His second part of the solution is that the brain's awareness is known to increase during the silence between two notes, so the train driver's horn is not his one long blast. , it was made up of two staccato notes. The third part is by painting the railway sleepers yellow so that if a train comes in, the sleepers disappear quickly, allowing the brain to quickly correct any errors in measuring the train's speed. did.

Datta talks about how Indian consumers respond to typical Indian themes in advertising. For example, neuroscience has proven that ads that depict the protagonist achieving something through jugaad resonate in India, she added.

Pillai cites business problems that his company has helped solve for life insurance companies. The Indian market is price sensitive, so it is now common knowledge that the cheapest product will be successful if it is good enough. The average Indian consumer would then become a cold computer, driven only by money. But in India, Pillai says, neuroscience research shows that “friction” is often the driving force.

Life in India is fraught with procedures and institutions that require a great deal of effort to understand and act upon. And the final intended result is not guaranteed.

Anyone who has tried to take advantage of the government's provident fund system will attest to that.

Pillai talks about functional friction, which is more important for semi-urban and rural people due to depletion of the higher ego. Functional friction is a frictional barrier that prevents a person from achieving the basic goals he or she sets out to achieve. In this particular case, the basic objective is to select the most suitable insurance product, pay the premium and enroll.

Customers who seek insurance without external pressure to buy require greater sensitivity and empathy from their insurers due to the increased physical, cognitive, and temporal friction they face. “In Tier 2/3, there is a young and ambitious segment emerging that benchmarks Tier 1. These customers are demanding the same level of service and sophistication from their insurers. Tailored solutions are needed to meet that expectation.What is common in India is that family members, co-beneficiaries and especially the women of the household play a key role in decision-making within the strata 2/3. Pillai said, adding that all these insights come from advanced component studies of the unconscious based on neuroscience, validated by other methods such as deep conversations and data.

ethical concerns

Musk's Neuralink, on the other hand, certainly paints a frightening scenario for neuroscience applications. Garg has expressed concern that his Neuralink data could be misused to manipulate consumer responses. Some people wonder if implants make the person more susceptible to external cues. Less exotic and more everyday applications of neuroscience also raise some concerns. In addition to these, the investigation is also under the scanner. The Neuromarketing Science and Business Association (NMSBA) has introduced the first Neuromarketing Code of Ethics. Covering areas such as privacy, consent, and transparency. The Advertising Standards Council of India responded to an email saying it has not issued guidelines on neuromarketing. A key issue is the informed consent of research participants, that is, whether they are aware of the full implications of their participation and whether they are being exploited. The use of young people under the age of 18 as research participants raises further concerns. The NMSBA states that the informed consent of a parent or guardian will be required.