2: This Book Is About The Consumer's Brain
Repeated: the term "neuroscience" was coined in 2002, to address the various approaches to marketing that borrow upon neurology, psychology, and other "brain" sciences to discover ways to influence customers' choices in the marketplace.
Why I Wrote This Book
The author goes back to his first book, on advertising, which was his method of consolidating various notes regarding neuroscience and its impact on the way consumers react to advertising messages: attempting to discover the reason viewers respond favorably to one advert over another and produce more effective promotional messages.
Why write a separate book rather than producing a revised edition of the first one? Brand marketing is significantly different to promotional advertising.
Advertising focuses on short-term reactions, largely based on emotion. It plays upon brain functions that are closer to instinct: we react quickly to a stimulus as a function of the survival instinct.
Brand, meanwhile, is more than a quick reaction and is based on "more than mere emotion." It is not devoid of emotion, but deals more with feelings and attitudes than a stimulus-response reaction.
As such, it's important to separate the two entirely: to apply the principles of advertising to branding is a serious mistake, and one that the author has seen many other speakers and authors make, using his original book and the research it contains to back the most bizarre and wrong-headed claims about branding.
Why Do We Make Decisions?
The question of decision-making seems a bit hackneyed, but is at the root of marketing: a customer decides what to purchase, if anything at all, so understanding the decision-making process is critical.
The objective of decision making is to choose the most positive course of action among alternatives, and give ourselves the motivation to take action.
Specifically, we seek he most efficient way to alleviate pain or cause pleasure. Here's much debate over the hedonistic view of decision making, but when you look at the way the brain works, it's clearly our prime motivator.
(EN: My sense is that the debate is not about hedonism itself, but whether we act in our immediate interest without regard to our long-term interest. Even those who wish to be - or appear to be - "socially responsible" are motivated by self-interest, but have been programmed to see "society" as an extension of self.)
Hence, the objective of marketing is to encourage the subject to regard their brand as the one that will make consumers "feel good" - advertising in the short term, branding in the long term.
How Do People Differ From Animals On This View?
Much of psychology is based on animal research - Pavlov's dogs and Skinner's pigeons - that has been carried over to human beings without much consideration that the human brain is significantly different from the animal brain.
Human beings are, in fact, animals - and this is beyond dispute. However, we are significantly different from any other species of animals due to our mental faculties: the human brain is much more complex than the animal brain, and our ways of thinking entirely different, in spite of the vestigial remains of animal instinct.
Specific to brand: no other species of animal has been found to make decisions based on anything other than immediate stimulus, and no other animal makes long-range plans.
Zoologists are fond of suggesting exceptions: the behavior of some animals in storing food for winter, following annual migration paths, and the like seems to suggest some planning faculty, but none of this behavior has been sufficiently linked to a planning process. As such, these same zoologists are amazed at the behavior, but have yet to explain it or prove any link to a rational faculty.
(EN: An interesting counterpoint was made by research on the migration of birds to Brazil - the birds will return to the same location each year, even after it has become urbanized or deforested, which contradicts the suggestion that it is intelligent decision.)
Ultimately, the animal research is interesting, but not applicable to humans. Similarities can be observed, certainly, but the human mind is significantly dissimilar to the animal mind, and must be considered on its own merits.
Decision-Making In The Brain
The decision-making process will be discussed in greater detail throughout the book, but here's a brief overview:
The process begins with an assessment of the current state: sense-data about the environment (identifying threats and opportunities), the condition of the body (hungry, tired, injured, etc.), and the state of mind (relaxed, anxious, etc.) are all perceived.
This data is channeled to the frontal lobes, where it is interpreted based on experience and memories. The information moves through the limbic system (the most basic part of the brain, which creates an immediate reaction) where it maybe filtered or interpreted in a primitive way, where basic identification is thought to occur (what is this thing? How do I feel about it?)
The frontal lobes analyze the input, determine our desires, and identify the most common options based on our experience, or similar experiences. Do we hold still, investigate, or run away?
Finally, these options are assessed and a course of action selected, and a commitment is made to undertake the action.
This is a "vast oversimplification," the author admits, but essentially an outline of a typical decision.
(EN: My sense is this also applies only to decisions made on the spur of the moment. Things are not always thus. Especially for large-ticket purchases, the subject gathers information and undergoes a slower and more deliberate process of decision-making. To apply the quick-reaction model to a slow-consideration decision seems a serious error.)
Human Buying Behavior
Going back to animal/human differences: humans adapt their environment to suit their needs - as such we literally live in world of our own creation, and the act of creation gives a specific purpose to every object in our environment. There is a reason that we receive stimuli from the environment, and the way that we react depends very much on our interpretation of that reason.
As such, our approach to needs fulfillment involves forethought and planning. For example, we do not wait until we feel hunger to act: we buy food in advance. Not only that, but we take a job, open a bank account, get a credit card, buy a car, buy a house, buy a refrigerator, and many other activities that are necessary to having food when we will need it.
Our predictions of the future are based on past experience, as well as inference about things we have never experienced. A person who has never done something before (getting married, going on a fishing trip, etc.) has no experience to guide them, but applies reason to predict and prepare for their needs.
None of these behaviors can be adequately explained in terms of animal instinct or emotional urges - they are rational processes, and distinctly human.
Granted, there remain objections about irrational choices, made on the spur of the moment without a deliberate process of reasoning, and the suggestion that because this approach doesn't explain everything, it lacks validity to marketing. But were the instinct/emotional camp to hold their own theory to the same standard, it would not hold.
Marketing Practice
Marketing practice differs according to the need in question: for some needs, people will plan for the future by taking action in the present; for other needs, they act "on impulse" for immediate consumption. Though, arguably, even an "impulse" purchase is done for consumption in the short-term future, as we generally must carry an item to the register, out of the store, and home before consuming or using it.
The choice of a product and the choice of a brand are two separate decisions, but both are guided by the assessment of what will make the buyer feel better. It's also noted that there is an immediate "feel good" reaction when making a purchase as well as the later "feel good" reaction when consuming the item.
They key difference is that the decision of product may be driven by emotion, but the choice of a brand, if brand is considered, is driven by reason - either the evaluation of past experiences of the brand, or an expectation of future experience based on inference.
As such, the task of the marketer is to create positive sentiment for his brand, greater than or equal to the sentiment for competing brands.