Influencing the customer in the right way

Marketers have to be careful which marketing techniques they use in terms of neuromarketing. The fact that marketing became a very sophisticated discipline is indisputable. Using EEG and MRI evaluations in order to understand how the customer feels, gives the marketer an unbelievable power. These tests do substitute surveys that have been done in the past in order to get the exact same information and could get falsified by the respondent.

Since science is not stoppable, every single day the human being understands the high complex functions of the brain a little more. As the Professor of Education and Human Development and director of the Mind, Brain & Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Mr. Fischer states in the frontline article the current "techniques will help scientists and educators to understand how brain and behavior work together, but we have a very long way to go.". Understanding the connection between brain function and behavior, that is the key and science is on its best way to solve its mysteries.

In neuromarketing these evaluations and understandings are used to communicate with the customer more effectively.

In my opinion eventually the issue will arise that customers start to feel manipulated and become more discreet about information they give away. New techniques clearly will help marketers to take advantage of that science, but as it has happened in previous years the customer changes. Deliberately or not is the question, but as soon as an uncomfortable feeling arises the body and the mind corrects our behavior to feel better again. This can mean that instead of reacting to a certain signal such as red color the body will "adopt" and change the effect to that color after seeing it too often.

Thus it is important for scientists and marketers to dig deeper. Neuroscientists try even to understand how much of the brain is used consciously and how much of it is used in our subconscious. Therefore it is crucial to determine where consciousness ends and another level of perception starts. As the scientists Marcus E. Raichle and Abraham Z. Snyder write in their book ("The neurology of consciousness: cognitive neuroscience and neuropathology" written by Steven Laureys and Giulio Tononi, 2009, p.82) the results of certain analysis have shown at which point the brain transcends the level of consciousness.

I think this is a very interesting and evolving area, marketers will try to understand fully. Is this right though? Is it really okay to influence someone's mind in such a deep stage so the person itself does not know he or she is deeply influenced? Even morally I would like to add that this techniques are disputable. A marketer has to distinguish between convincing a person of a certain product advertisement and manipulating that person. So the next time a picture is shown to you, think about how the colors, the heading, and maybe even the smell of the paper influences you and your decisions.