The Buying Brain: Secrets for Selling to the Subconscious Mind (35 page)

Ridiculous in today’s world? Of course, but your brain still registers the danger and responds accordingly. It alerts your body to the subconsciously perceived threats and directs you to avoid them, and get out quickly.

Your brain is geared, from evolution’s millennia, to seek out and protect you from
the dangers that lurk around you. That sharp corner—of the end cap or your
kitchen cabinet—represents just such a threat, and your brain cannot help but
react instantaneously, and subconsciously, to avoid it.

The brain dislikes straight lines and sharp edges. Where possible, avoiding incorporating sharp lines in a store setting makes the experience much more pleasing to the brain.

In many studies across categories and retailers, we have found display devices with rounded edges to have greater levels of neurological effectiveness, and shelf dividers known as “blades” with rounded edges to outperform regular linear dividers. The lesson here is to remove the perceived threat that sharp edges present, and the uber-watchdog, that 24/7 sentry sitting atop your shoulders—your subconscious mind—will relax and be happy.

This principle was confirmed in a recent study for another food manufacturer. Here’s what we did, and what we discovered: Variables tested: three aisle designs (one with rounded edges) Gender map: 50 percent male and 50 percent female Findings: the design with rounded corners significantly outperformed the other two designs. Rolling this out in test markets resulted in a significant increase in sales—15 percent. That’s how much the brain likes rounded edges.

What else prompts your subconscious to respond when you’re roaming the retail range?

Our in-store studies have revealed another intriguing fact. It appears
the
brain prefers natural textures
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and features with alterations in textures performed significantly differently, the key learning being natural textures seem to evoke a deep emotional response in the brain. We humans are creatures of nature, and as such, we are neurologically oriented to find the sight, feel, scent, and even the sound of things like wood, grass, leaves, and water familiar, comfortable, and inviting.

The subconscious can be “fooled” to a limited degree, though. For example, plastic representations of wooden surfaces can substitute for the real thing, if executed authentically and plausibly.

Are You Experienced?

The brain thrives on new experiences. But experiences, as we have all learned in various ways living our lives, come in all sizes, shapes, and levels of success.

Retailers strive to make the shopping experience positive, fulfilling, and entertaining. For market research purposes though, with a thousand sensory inputs at each turn, shopping can be nearly impossible for humans to distill and describe in clear and useful terms. In the retail sphere, what from a neurological perspective makes for a positive experience? What are the pain points of purchasing for the consumer?

1.
Navigating through the ranges of pricing and array of features
2.
Having to make a choice between options
3.
Parting with cash to make a purchase Entertainment can act as an antidote to these pain points. More on that in a few paragraphs. Let’s examine the basics from the brain’s point of view.

Shopper Experience Framework

How can we quantify and compare superior experiences in the retail environment?

We have found in our research a number of elements that give an edge, that separate out one purchase enjoyment experience from another. Studies across categories, retailers, and the globe have revealed startling commonalities we have incorporated into a framework to analyze and evaluate in-store shopping experiences.

The Shopper Experience Framework comprises seven critical elements.

Like the Brand Essence Framework, the Shopper Experience Framework encompasses an entire experience, categorizing the process the way the brain does, from the simple and personal to the complex and metaphorical.

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Resonance in the consumer’s mind to the Shopper Experience Framework’s dimensions are measured using both continuous EEG measurements and the DSR technique discussed earlier.

The seven dimensions of the Shopper Experience Framework are:
1.
Information

2.
Environment

3.
Entertainment

4.
Education

5.
Simplicity

6.
Self-Worth/Social Worth

7.
Community

Information:
The person immersed in a shopping experience must find it rich in information and informational relevance. Information is intimately related to “findability.” Being able to find what one wants easily is a hallmark and crucial benchmark of a superior experience. The NeuroMetrics we use to evaluate information are Attention, Memory, and Awareness. We typically evaluate the organizational design of the categories in the store for ease of use and intuitiveness. We evaluate displays, promotions, and product information for clarity and understanding. We evaluate menus and menu boards for comprehensiveness. It’s useful to measure the Deep Subconscious Response to the following key categories:
findability, ease, simplicity, discovery, and
pleasure.

Enabling information search without the use of words or numbers can work wonders in the in-store environment. Our studies have found that effective in-store environments creatively use imagery and iconography to enhance emotional processing and avoid taxing the memory with words and numbers.

From the sales consultant in a store’s fashion and beauty departments to the technology sales representative in a computer store,
human beings play a vital role
in providing information to the consumer. As an integral component of in-store analysis, for stores where humans primarily provide information, we record and analyze these conversations to evaluate them for their neurological effectiveness. This technique is particularly useful in the pharmaceutical industry to analyze the neurological effectiveness of sales representatives whose role, and challenge, is to provide information to physicians who on average have less than 90 seconds to devote to this process.

When it comes to new products or features, humans hunger for knowledge and information. We subconsciously seek information as we forage down the aisles:
what’s new?
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is designed to reveal if there is a manageable amount of information that the brain can absorb in the retail setting, or is it too overwhelming, causing the subconscious to “shut down” the attention devoted to individual stimuli.

Recent neuroscience research is indicating that the older we get, the harder it is to suppress distractions. This has huge implications for the retail industry, especially with the increase in aging populations in many countries around the globe.

Environment:
Environment refers to the physical context of the shopping experience. This context is by definition multisensory and provides numerous opportunities for implicit priming to set the shopper in the right frame of mind, motivate purchasing, and imagine enjoying the products relevant to their life. The core NeuroMetrics of environment include Attention, Emotion, Memory, Purchase Intent, and Novelty. Across categories, retailers, restaurants, fast and quick service outlets, malls, and even websites, the multisensory environment triggers multiple subconscious associations the consumer has formed with brands, products, occasions, and life events. Our studies have consistently shown that environments that mimic the consumer’s natural environment for product consumption create superior Purchase Intent compared to environments that do not.

Environments that prime the occasions or life situations in which the consumer uses or experiences the displayed products and services create significant Emotion, Purchase Intent, and Novelty. A large company making baby foods and baby products asked us for recommendations on idealized environments for moms who shop for babies and very young children. Based on our research on retail environments, we proposed creating a separate room (similar to the high-fidelity rooms within retailers that sell high-end home audio and video systems) with padded floors, softer lights, and a quiet atmosphere with a lullaby playing. The goal was to recreate an environment that was a noise-free sanctuary for the mom. Our neurological studies revealed that this multisensory sanctuary contributed to high levels of Emotion, Purchase Intent, and Novelty.

Environments are also created by the creative use of merchandising features, displays, aisle designs, signage, and end-caps. These elements play a vital role in re-creating natural environments, but we have also found that too many elements can compete with each other, lowering the effectiveness of all. Thus, while it is important to study these elements individually to understand their distinctive Effectiveness, Emotional Engagement, and Purchase Intent levels, it is also important to study them together.

We have also found that different display elements serve different purposes at different locations in the store. An end-cap in an aisle serves primarily to generate Attention, whereas Novelty is more likely to be generated in the P1: OTA/XYZ

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lobby of the store. But when the consumer approaches the aisle from the lobby, the end-cap can begin to generate Emotional Engagement, and significantly contribute to Purchase Intent by defining a suitable physical context as the consumer enters the aisle.

It is also very revealing to analyze the Deep Subconscious Response of the consumer to different designed environments. Instead of finding whether the shopping experience was “pleasant,” “comfortable,” or “exciting,” we have found it more productive to look at the Deep Subconscious Response to aspects and truths of the environment that pertain to the consumer’s life, such as “homelike,” “genuine,” and “dinner time.”

We have also found that “implicit environments” can be created through category and product adjacencies. That is to say, placing selected products next to each other can create an implicit environment without explicitly labeling it as such. Another kind of implicit environment can be created by placing categories together that are emotionally or logically related in the consumer’s mind. These “microenvironments” can create high levels of Emotional Engagement and Purchase Intent that exceed levels each product can attain on its own. It is our observation that a linear warehouse-like placement of products in stores is much less neurologically Effective than environments that create a superior shopping experience with an environment that is natural, effective, and intuitive in the consumer’s mind.

Entertainment
: A huge benefit of modern life is the luxury of being entertained while we shop. This is such a compelling feature of the experience that we seek it out whenever we can. What a joy to be able to delight in the perusal of edibles, rather than constantly looking over one’s shoulder for predators! We are thrilled by it every time. The combination of shopping (which the brain more or less equates with hunting and gathering) and entertainment is enormously powerful. That’s why shopping has become a national pastime.

As I pointed out earlier, shopping to the subconscious is often akin to wading into an ocean of numbers and words. This sea of information can be effectively navigated through emotional cues that guide the shopper through islands of entertainment. We have found that
entertainment provides emotional
relief, minimizes the pain of purchase, and increases overall shopping
time.

Entertainment also seems to proffer the side benefits of converting the goal-oriented shopper into one that browses and is generally more relaxed.

The consequence of this transformation is that the shopper becomes more open to considering categories and products that were not originally under P1: OTA/XYZ

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consideration. The primary NeuroMetrics of entertainment are Emotion and Novelty. While there can be considerable entertainment value to features and displays, we find larger increases in Emotional Engagement and Novelty when entertainment involves interactions with humans, animals, or technology.

When we explicitly isolate and test the individual aspects of the in-store environment that are meant to entertain the consumer, rating them on entertainment value and potential, we have consistently observed that a higher entertainment value is highly correlated with better ratings of the overall shopping experience. Worth noting here is that personnel in the store, be they clerks, waiters, or floorwalkers, play a vital role in providing an entertainment boost for the consumer. To this end, we have found it useful to evaluate the scripts and delivery performances of personnel to analyze the neurological Effectiveness of their typical interactions with shoppers.

Education
: Superior shopping experiences are those that enable consumers to walk away not only having absorbed a lot of information, but having
extracted insight
that becomes part of an education experience. Education is more than information. It is distilled insights that can be used on an ongoing basis. As discussed earlier, the human brain seeks to categorize, organize, and make sense of the chaotic world we live in. The insights gained could be human, cultural, about oneself, about life or society, or perhaps about the future.