Neuromarketing: the future of marketing research?

We, especially women, all have been in a situation like the following; you went to a city centre, not needing anything. When returning you discover you bought bags full of stuff you accidentally came across..

Marketers tried to discover for a long time why we buy and how this can be influenced. It already has been known that consumers only think 2 seconds before making a buying decisions when they are shopping. Nothing stays a coincidence anymore. Lately, I found out that  traditional buyers decision models can be thrown away soon. A whole new level of marketing research is rising! Neuromarketing is a new phenomenon marketers are experimenting with. At the moment, scientist are capable of visualizing with CT-Scans what happens in the brain when we are confronted with advertising or brands.    

In the next video Martin Lindstrom, who calls himself ‘brand futurist’,  talks about neuromarketing.  

The brain is an area we still have to learn a lot about, neuromarketing has not been applied yet because of that. It cannot be explained what typical aspects of an advertisement causes the buying decisions and how this can be influenced. However, so claims Lindstrom in an interview on his website, it can be made visible in CT-scans whether or not somebody is profiling himself with your brand or not.

The best way to test usability of a website: Paper prototyping

Before designing A digital user interface, a website for example, It is difficult to estimate how to make a usable and proper structure, what words or what info-graphics to use.

This video is going to show you how the real professionals do it! Just with paper and pencil!

First, you have to draw every webpage with all dropdown menu`s on separate papers. After this, you need a person from your target group to cooperate. Ask this person to navigate to certain information on your website by pointing on the paper prototype were to click on. Ask the person to think loud and video tape the whole session. When you are done you know exactly what has to be done to improve your design!

Making friends through social media

It is often talked about; social media changed a lot in social interaction between people. Some say society became less social because of the decrease of face-to-face interaction. Even the Dutch queen mentioned her concerns in her chrismas speech to the Dutch people in 2009. My question is, is it really impossible to make friends through social media?

Today I discovered, there are hundreds of youtube videos about how to reach the limit of 5000 friends on Facebook. Different strategies are explained and demonstrated. My conclusion; quantity is no problem. However, I would like to know; what about the quality? How dedicated are friends on Facebook. The next video shows an interview with Andrew Garfield who plays a part in the movie Social Network. He talks about Facebook as a platform for real connection and social interaction.

Also researchers think true relationships can be build through digital media. In 1992 Joseph Walther developed the theory of Social Information Processing. According to that theory communication through digital media is not necessarily impersonal. People are motivated to build social relationships and create their own ways to put social context to a conversation, even without physical presence. A simple example is the smileys we use to illustrate our state of mind in a digital conversation.

I thinks digital communication brings opportunities for building relationships. According to a very old theory form Berger & Calabrese (1975) getting to know each other is based on reducing uncertainty about each other. We are desperate to prevent miscommunication and, information about each other can take the uncertainty away. Social networks give the opportunity to collect information in a very passive way and this can speed up bonding between people. The next Youtube movie shows that Twitter actually is an application that brings social interaction to a whole different level.

Final conclusion; making real friends on social networks is possible and happening. According to a blogpost published on molblog. 32% of the dutch youth between 9 and 16 years old has online friendships and 66,9% of them considers a few of their online friends as real friends.