30: Is The Future What It Was?
The author acknowledges that speculating about the future is prone to be wrong, but the question of what lies ahead remains compelling - readers wish to know, and writers may indulge in fortune-telling. That said ...
The author can foresee the potential for neuroscience to have a significant impact on marketing theory and practice. Good ideas, and valid science, will stand the test of time and outlast the shroud of hype and disinformation that is used to conceal them.
But this may take some time. Neuromarketing is thoroughly polluted by charlatans and schemers, and the marketing industry is often quick to dismiss theories as nonsense, even at the cost of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
On the level of practice, there will be continued experimentation and refinement of bio-measurement techniques such as EEG to assess the effectiveness of advertising messages, package designs, logos, and the like.
On the level of theory, there will be continued research into the behavior of consumers, how they make decisions, and so on. Just as the findings of neuroscience to date have affirmed and validated theories of the past, so will the theories of the future affirm and validate what present research is suggesting today.
What is true, sound, and valid will stand the test of time. What is false will be cast aside, and what is inaccurate will be refined. Such is the nature of knowledge and scientific inquiry.
What The Future Will Bring
To address more granular topics for the near future:
More Insight Into Background Feelings
Contemporary research into marketing, advertising in particular, has been overly focused on stimulus-response, based on the notion that when a person experiences something, the quality of the experience gives rise to emotion.
Background feelings - homeostasis, mood, personality, and culture - have largely been neglected. There is increasing recognition that the way in which a person reacts to an advert has as much or more to do with the person, even before the advert was presented.
(EN: An analogy comes to mind - that in chemistry, it would be utterly foolish to test the reaction between a solid and a solvent, knowing only the nature of the solid and ignoring the chemical composition of the solvent - but this is the equivalent to the contemporary approach to advertising in considering the ad and not the viewer.)
As such, it is foreseeable that these will be given greater attention. Real progress is likely to be made when we begin to combine introspective questions with those that gauge the subject's reaction, such that we can cross-tabulate the effect of a given advertisement against a given set of background emotions.
Technological Improvements
Thus far, we have seen technology overcome some of the limitations of technology - for example, the use of microelectronics and wireless networking (Bluetooth) to free the test subject from the need to be physically wired to a bulky instrument, in a manner that made it difficult to use EEG for research purposes. Perhaps we can hope to see MRI follow the same path, to provide a small and portable device to replace the stationary scanner.
More importantly, we may see improvements in the acuity of devices: we will be able to take readings more quickly to better observe the sequence of events; we will be able to probe deeper areas of the brain like the limbic system; and we will be able to measure electronic activity in smaller brain areas to reveal minute details that are presently immeasurable.
Brain Activation
While we are able to determine what activity takes place in the brain in response to stimuli, we are unable to stimulate or activate the brain to get a better interpretation of what the observed activity actually signifies.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is presently experimental and primitive, but can be expected to become refined to enable marketers to "knock out" certain parts of the brain to more accurately determine how they influence decision-making, or stimulate certain areas of the brain to discover what happens, and cross-reference this against our observations.
Granted, panic-mongering about marketers attempting to impact the human brain, to activate a "buy" button and turn consumers into zombies that are controlled in ways that are contrary to their best interest is likely to ensue, and there has been legal precedent (subliminal advertising) for banning research into areas that cause public discomfort, even when there is no proof that there is any real potential for harm.
But if it can survive the panic, there is real potential for TMS in both marketing and other industries (increasing alertness, overcoming addiction, treating mental disorders), though there is much work to be done before this will be more than science fiction.
Trained Respondents
Given the complexities of utilizing biometric equipment, there is some potential value in training members of a panel to utilize the equipment to facilitate surveys.
This may not be so farfetched as it sounds: there are presently a few self-help products that teach users to fir themselves with equipment that measures galvanic skin response, and experimentation in video games that will train players to calibrate eye-tracking equipment.
As the equipment becomes cheaper and easier top use, there may come a time when significant segments of the population own and are able to use biometric equipment, facilitating media research. Consider the consumer acceptance of novelties such as motion controllers for video games, and it's clear that deployment can be very rapid.
Once this has been accomplished, it may not be so farfetched for a firm to ask users to participate in an online survey or experiment that requires the use of equipment they have already purchased for other purposes. If experiments can be designed as a "game," adoption may be all the faster.
Academic Training
Given that neuroscience is only a few years old, there aren't enough qualified teachers to offer degree programs (and if no-one is learning it now, no-one can teach it tomorrow). It takes quite a while for a discipline to gather steam.
Presently, neuroscience and neuromarketing are subjects into which a university might host a lecture, include some coverage in another course, or bring in a visiting professor to teach an elective, but certainly there is not sufficient expertise, or even sufficient information, for it to be recognized as an academic discipline in which a person can "major."
It will take quite some time for this to change, for the body of information and the number of qualified practitioners to grow to the point that it can be taught as a university subject - and even at that, it suffers from the politics of academia: as it touches on marketing, psychology, and neurology, which department shall "own" the discipline has the potential to be much debated.
Summary Implications For Neuromarketing
At the end, the author presents a quick list of implications - some of which are repetitive, others seem more like admonitions than predictions, but here it is:
- The technology will become smaller, cheaper, and better
- Neuromarketing will become more widely used across a wider range of needs and uses
- Neuromarketing should be used in combination with other research methods - the metrics are not, alone, sufficient to support conclusions
- Marketers will inevitably want to leverage it to their advantage, and want it to be easier to do - and if they put dollars behind their desires, it will happen
- There will be the need to separate the valid science from the chicanery - beware of glib answers and big promises
- There is a great need to create databases and publish results, to contribute to the general development of the discipline
- There is a need for more sophisticated and informed marketing, which will require better experimental designs than clinical observation and random "see-what-happens" experiments.
- Ultimately, we will understand more about people's buying decisions, though it is unlikely we will discover a single sure-fire solution that will tilt the results in favor of a specific brand.