The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (36 page)

The brain conducts a constant quest for knowledge and facts, from trivia to major insights. To cite a specific example of the importance and relevance of this neurological tendency in the retail field, we have analyzed aisles in a category that we prepopulated with the usual mix of display exhortations—promotions, price points, and calls to action. We computed the Effectiveness scores for the overall experience and the Deep Subconscious Response for these aisles. We then replaced the usual materials with small signage presenting facts, insights, and trivia that had educational value. When we re-analyzed the same aisles, we found a significant jump in Effectiveness.

We find that
displays emphasizing educational value are processed
differently
in the brain than displays that have purely entertainment value.

Displays with insights and educational value are processed more “rationally”

and prime shoppers to conduct more “considered shopping.” Consumers engage in more price comparisons and feature comparisons than when exposed to more entertainment-oriented displays.

We have also noticed higher levels of brand loyalty shifts when educational materials are presented at the point of purchase. Similarly, for a new brand that is attempting to penetrate a space owned and dominated by a category P1: OTA/XYZ

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leader, educational displays can prime the consumer to engage in more rational decision making and potentially weaken the more emotional hold of brand loyalty on the consumer’s mind.

Simplicity:
Simplicity improves the shopping experience. Whether it understands the basic purpose of the product or service in the first place, finding additional information, streamlining the purchase experience, transporting products to your home, opening the package, or fixing a problem, simplicity must be a core component of the consumer’s experience. This is why a new aisle design in a familiar store is almost universally disliked, no matter how beautiful or functional it may be. Once the brain has become comfortable with a store layout, its sense of simplicity is upset by the new layout because it requires energy and cognitive resources to master. If the new layout is well designed and pleasing, then the rebellious brain will learn it more quickly, eventually coming to enjoy the shopping experience even more than before.

NeuroMetrics of simplicity are Attention and Memory. As things get simpler, less explicit attention is required and the consumer can navigate primarily by accessing memory, often implicit memory. Walking the aisles becomes a similar experience to driving home from work.

We have found that simplicity is often associated with numerosity, color, taxonomy, and the fluency of processing. When we measured the Deep Subconscious Response to shopping environments, we found, not surprisingly, that fewer objects in the environment contributed to a sense of simplicity.

But we also found that too much environmental simplicity could become perceived as a lack of choice. In our studies, we found simplicity turning into lack of choice in different ways from category to category in the store, on an aisle-to-aisle basis. Our studies have led us to conclude that there is no general principle that can be applied uniformly to determine an optimal level of simplicity in a shopping environment.

The
intelligent use of color
also contributes to a sense of simplicity. We have found that aisle designers can intelligently use color to separate and highlight, thereby creating greater simplicity of navigation. Taxonomy is another key dimension of simplicity. The choice of words, categories, and subcategories create logical hierarchies of information that can significantly impact findability, and thereby become a core contributor to perceived simplicity.

Self-Worth/Social Worth
: An experience that enhances one’s self-worth might transpire in a store when the salesperson compliments you on how amazing you look. Or perhaps as you walk out of the store with your purchase, the sales clerk says, “that was a very good deal you got!” Self-worth arises from an experience in which shoppers come away feeling good about themselves.

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Social worth arises from an experience in which shoppers come away feeling good about their contribution to society. “I am a smart shopper and I provide environmentally-conscious products for my family on a tight budget” brings a sense of both self-worth and social worth. Our brains are hard-wired to balance our individual and group needs. When both needs are met by a shopping experience, we are most satisfied. Self-worth and social worth both help us withstand the pain of parting with cash. The primary NeuroMetric of self-worth/social worth is Emotion.

We have found a number of elements in the in-store environment that can naturally enhance self-worth. According to our studies, signage in the store that stimulates an affirmation of one’s worthiness increases perceptions of self-worth. Signage in the store that proclaims that the “
consumer is deserving
”

increases self-worth. Shopping trips where some percent of the overall trip purchase is donated to a worthy cause of the consumer’s choosing enhances self-worth. In studying coupons, we have found that
coupons that include
an act of charity
can produce a significant rise in Purchase Intent. Given that most corporations engage in corporate charity, we have seen that contributing to charitable causes in a way that includes the consumer in the process, thereby increasing the consumer’s self-worth as well as supporting the charity, can be a doubly beneficial effort.

In one study, we tested the impact of charitable giving at the point of purchase. Consumers were asked to choose one of four deserving causes to receive a percentage of what they spent. We found that this simple gesture resulted in a huge increase in Emotional Engagement, as well as much higher Deep Subconscious Response scores for words relating to the “pleasure” or

“satisfaction” associated with the shopping experience.

Community
:
People want to belong.
It may be a car club, sales club, club of people who love panda bears or a group of people who believe in green products. Whatever it is, humans are hard-wired to want to
belong
as part of a community.

In our early hunting and gathering days, the community literally helped ensure basic survival. As we evolved, the conscious and subconscious rewards of community became more subtle, but nonetheless deeply valued and, therefore, consistently sought after: companionship, personal fulfillment, shared cultural experiences, “tribal status,” and more.

A community serves a larger purpose. The explosion of social networks on the Internet today is just the latest example of that fundamental fact. Digital communications have provided a way for people to pursue their true niches and find or form communities to which they want to belong. From a neurological P1: OTA/XYZ

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perspective, people value a shopping experience that automatically enlists them as members of an exclusive and unique community.

The subconscious seems to assign superior value to an experience that combines a
sense of exclusivity, on the one hand, with a sense of belonging on the other—a
difficult act to balance.

For the subconscious, exclusivity and belonging are not inconsistent; quite the opposite, they can and do coexist comfortably together. The NeuroMetrics of community are Attention, Emotion, and Memory.

Community can have many foundations—geographical, lifestyle-based, age-based, ethnic, preference- or interest-based, or purpose- or passion-based.

We find that communities
fulfill deep emotional needs,
so naturally when we analyze retail environments, we specifically seek elements that are intended to showcase a sense of belonging, or affiliation with a community of choice.

We then analyze those elements to find the level of attention the community generates in the consumer’s mind: the emotional engagement of the community and the memorability of the community. We then measure the Deep Subconscious Response to community-related themes by analyzing resonance between the shopping experience and words like “belonging,” “affiliation,”

and “community.”

Sorting Through the Stimuli

Your brain is subject to an onslaught of stimuli in the shopping environment and it’s becoming more cluttered all the time. You may feel fully assimilated to the in-store cacophony, but your prefrontal cortex is firing in high gear as you stroll the aisles, simultaneously processing all the sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations you’re subjected to . . . even tastes, when you stop and sample the occasional product offering.

Your neural networks are sending and exchanging data at blinding
speed,
correlating all these incoming sensations, and the prefrontal cortex is orchestrating the entire process, sorting through the coursing streams, assigning priorities, calling on stored memories, and blending the symphony of stimuli in order to make sense of it all.

“The music of merchandising” plays in your head as an ever-changing melody, rising and falling in tempo and intensity as you stroll down the aisles.

Your brain collects data from the visual cortex, processing what each of your eyes are seeing, turning that information into three-dimensional, stereoscopic imagery and simultaneously matching that with data streams flooding forth

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from the auditory, olfactory, and tactile centers. In turn, it’s doing the same thing with the “lead information” streaming in from your ears, fingertips, nose, and mouth.

And all the while, your brain is reminding and enabling you to breathe, blink, swallow, walk forward, turn your head, focus your eyes, and countless millions of other activities that are largely and often exclusively the purview of your subconscious mind.

Subconscious Signals

Ever stood in front of a whole drugstore shelf full of toothpastes and felt a certain ennui? Pondering which to choose: paste or gel, whitening/brightening/

cavity-preventing, mint or wintergreen-flavored, white, striped or aqua, seemingly ad infinitum? If you have, it’s because of a fascinating neurological phenomenon called repetition blindness.

Your mind checks out when confronted with too much of one thing. (Even a good thing!)

So, what does this mean? This means that your product’s visual appeal when stacked adjacent to your competitors is critical, especially for categories where product sizes, shapes, and packaging tend to be very similar. Find ways to stand out for the subconscious, and it will reward you with its attention.

Repetition blindness
occurs when your frontal cortex has to process an array of similar visual images all streaming in from the visual cortex. Coming back to our dental health example, when your brain “sees” box after box of identically-shaped toothpaste packages, lined up in row after row, many sporting very similar colors, logos, words, and images . . . well, your brain takes a kind of mini-holiday.

“Too much, too identical, can’t differentiate, where’s the novelty,” it tells itself. And the result is that your subconscious perceives it as a sort of big blur.

We’re neurologically programmed to search for differences. To seek out things that enable us to make sense out of the environment we find ourselves in and to navigate our world safely and productively. When the brain is presented with a series of repetitive images—even if there are some differences among them—repetition blindness sets in. The brain no longer “sees” each individual image as it would if that image stood alone, or with only a small number of similar/identical images.