NeuroMarketing, Contemporary Consumer, and Globalisation and Localisation

Contemporary Marketing Issues Portfolio
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Contemporary Marketing Issues Portfolio
Neuromarketing
Marketing is a social and managerial process by which organizations create and exchange their products and value to obtain their needs and wants. Earlier, marketing's primary functions included advertising, distributing, and selling, but today's context has witnessed tremendous growth due to technological advancement (Kumar, 2015). The current emergence and use of technology in marketing have resulted in neuromarketinge: - a new marketing branch that utilizes technology to determine consumers' reactions to products and brand names. Kumar (2015) defined neuromarketing as a commercial marketing discipline that uses neuropsychology and neuroscience to gain insight into customers' preferences, motivations, behaviors, and decisions, which can help inform innovative advertising, pricing, and product development (Fortunato et al., 2014). It acts as an effective customer engagement and persuasion tool.
According to Narayanan & Raj (2020), neuromarketing is a marketing strategy that uses neuroscience techniques to change consumers’ perceptions, preferences, and decisions about a product. Individual suspicions control about 95% of purchase decisions (Kumar, 2015). Around 70% with emotional connection to a brand spend a lot of money on purchases, whereas more than 80% are likely to recommend their preferred brand to family and friends (Narayanan & Raj, 2020). This is the significance of engaging customers emotionally. Neuromarketing attracted several giant companies, including Coca-Cola, General Motors, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble. In 2001, the synthesis of various related neuroscience and marketing techniques began to attract business people and journalists following the establishment of the neuromarketing division by the Atlanta-based marketing firm Bright House (Kumar, 2015). The neuroscience techniques guiding this concept make it possible to identify and understand cerebral mechanisms significant to consumer behavior.
Neuroscience aims to gather knowledge about brain structure and function. Cognitive neuroscience is a specific branch that helps individuals understand the neural mechanisms behind the reasoning, decision-making, memory, and cognitive-related issues. This is essential in increasing the company’s business actions (Kumar, 2015). According to Narayanan & Raj (2020), neuromarketing is a branch of neuroeconomics, an interdisciplinary discipline that combines economics, psychology, and neuroscience to study how the brain functions to make decisions (Khushaba et al., 2013) Neuro marketing aims to solve the consumers’ problem of not knowing what they want and how to express it (Khushaba et al., 2013).
Numerous techniques and methods are used in neuromarketing to detect hidden information. The most popular methods used in assessing human brain activities in neuromarketing include Electroencephalography (EEG), and Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Khushaba et al., 2013). EEG measures and records the brain’s electrical activity. It is the most practicable, cost-efficient, and suitable tool among brain scanning techniques. Its simplicity and compactness enable it to make a quantitative evaluation of brain activities through the high sensitivity level and temporal resolution (Narayanan & Raj, 2020). fMRI uses powerful magnetic and radio waves to create high-quality brain images (Kumar, 2015). It also uses an MRI scanner to detect active brain parts and tell when the brain responds to a particular stimulus.
Research by Kumar (2015) provided insight into how the consumers’ brain processes various designed products. The fMRI results of this study showed that objects with reputation activate reward-related brain areas through cultural conditioning (Kumar, 2015). Concerning the product’s perceived attractiveness, car images in the study activated the participants’ brain parts to influence their decision. (Kumar, 2015). Marketers can apply the activity changes in the brain’s reward system influenced by an attractive product design to predict consumers’ purchasing behavior.
A perfect example of a neuroscience marketing technique is the Coca-Cola Company. Coca-Cola is known for creating some of the most exciting campaigns in the commercial world (Narayanan & Raj, 2020). Its marketing campaigns in recent years have made use of neuroscience to attract consumers. With access to a private neuroscience lab, the company's digital agency developed its Heist commercial, one of the highly-ranked advertisements. The Coca-Cola Heist ad excellently demonstrates the feeling of happiness the firm wanted to give its consumers (Khushaba et al., 2013). The advert is extremely appealing and convincing. Its concrete rudiments effectively engross the customers and pass the drink's envisioned happiness message. The three persuasive elements of ethos, pathos, and logos demonstrated in the advert are integral to marketing communications and help persuade the target audience.
The famous Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi experiment, in which scientists investigated what motivated brand preferences, brought neuromarketing into the spotlight. This experiment shows the role played by emotions in decision-making. In this study, the researchers investigated differences in brain activity during soda consumption when the participants knew they were drinking Coca-Cola or Pepsi versus when they were unaware of the brand they were consuming (Narayanan & Raj, 2020). They subsequently sought to discover how cultural messages influence people's perception of products. The researchers observed that the participants preferred Pepsi when they did not know the brand. However, 75% of the subjects claimed a preference for Coca-Cola upon knowing the brand they were taking (Kumar, 2015).
The study found that the subjects’ awareness of what they were consuming versus not knowing what they were drinking was associated with activity changes in the brain (Kumar, 2015). Neurologists determined that emotions and memories influenced preference for Coca-Cola after knowing that they were taking this drink. For instance, despite Pepsi meeting the consumers’ tastes more, Coca-Cola remained the preferred drink because of its association with specific moments and emotions through targeted advertising campaigns (Kumar, 2015).
Another example is Frito-Lay, the company manufacturing Cheetos, the bright orange snack food in supermarkets and convenience stores (Kumar, 2015). Over a decade ago, the company launched baked versions of all its snacks and healthy options to appeal to its female customers. The firm discovered that most of its customers were men despite women snacking more than men. Frito-Lay turned to a neuro-based marketing agency, Jupiter Park, to understand why female consumers overlooked its snacks and how to rebrand its products (Kumar, 2015). The agency used fMRI to understand the response of the consumer’s brains and found that the advanced communication centers in women’s brains allowed them to break down complex advertising messages easily (Khushaba et al., 2013). Besides, some women's brains responsible for decision-making and guilt were more developed. As a result, the company replaced the ‘‘guilt-free’’ eating advertisements with images of spices and healthy ingredients to attract female consumers. The company received more than 195 million positive impressions and female customers within six months, increasing its sales records (Narayanan & Raj, 2020).
Neuromarketing, therefore, has proven to be a significant marketing tool in this era of technological advancement. Companies that apply this concept in their marketing departments have witnessed an increase in consumers and sales because this strategy helps organizations attract more customers and maintain existing consumers. Through this concept, marketers can understand the relationship between a person’s brain activity and the image of a product. Neuromarketing also influences consumers' decision-making and preferences regarding a particular product. Several studies have identified that most customers' decisions are based on the company's reputation as opposed to the quality of its products. This is evident in the Coca-Cola versus Pepsi experiment, which concluded that customers’ emotional connection to a brand increases their chances of preferring and recommending it to other consumers. The growing advantages of neuromarketing call for many companies to be innovative by incorporating this concept into their marketing strategies.
Despite the positive contribution of neuroscience in marketing, ethical concerns have emerged, with some critics arguing that this strategy affects the consumers negatively. They claim that neuromarketing manipulates the consumers’ minds, which later influence their purchasing decisions (Isa et al., 2019). For instance, through neuromarketing, a company can understand the consumers’ behavior and preference and thus, can introduce more profitable services. Critics asserted that neuromarketing introduces a buy button in the consumer’s brain to manipulate them by influencing their decisions. This gives advertisers that employ neuromarketing a potentially unfair advantage over marketers that do not use the strategy (Isa et al., 2019).
The manipulative nature of neuromarketing raises concerns over autonomy. The autonomy concept entails the freedom to make decisions or choose what to buy. Arguably, the neuromarketing has neglected violated the autonomy principle because it influences the consumers to choose neuromarketing products. Another ethical issue arising from neuromarketing is privacy. According to Isa et al. (2019), neuromarketing utilizes private information and data, evoking the ethical concern of invading privacy. It is because researchers studying neuromarketing must access customers’ personal information. However, the primary concerns are informed consent and handling and evaluating consumer information.
The Contemporary Consumer
The advancement in technology and accessibility of the internet have significantly impacted the contemporary consumer behavior and decision-making. Most today’s consumers are highly adapted to the internet in making decisions about purchasing products or services (Grubor & Marić, 2015). This influence has exposed contemporary consumers to counterfeit products and services. Internet favors counterfeiting for many reasons. First, most online websites are unregulated, and this allows marketers of counterfeit products to adverse their items to unsuspecting consumers (Da Cunha Brandão & Gadekar, 2019). Second, most online consumers are unable to differentiate counterfeit from original product. Third, the internet provides a suitable platform for marketing counterfeits with limited chance of getting caught.
Although counterfeit products attract contemporary consumers, it is worth noting that engaging in counterfeiting is both unethical and illegal. This behavior arouses moral disgust. Every business person or organization needs to observe business ethics to maintain a high standard of professionalism and attract many customers (Grubor & Marić, 2015). Faking a product is not only a crime that may lead to a lawsuit but also a behavior that violates business ethics. If consumers realize a product is fake in some way, they may feel revulsion toward it (Rutter & Bryce, 2008). This harms the product efficiency in the consumers’ mind, posing a significant threat to the original brand.
Consumption of Counterfeit Products
Counterfeit products are illegitimately made goods that resemble the original products but are of lower quality (Da Cunha Brandão & Gadekar, 2019). Manufacturers make counterfeit products illegally imitating or using a registered trademark without authorization, infringing upon the owner's intellectual rights. Today, the production, marketing, and sale of counterfeit products is a growing phenomenon strengthened by the internet. Most counterfeits are purchased online since consumers only depend on the information the seller provides that is easy to manipulate (Da Cunha Brandão & Gadekar, 2019). The internet offers a platform for counterfeiters to advertise their fake products without consumer inspection, making selling these products possible. With currency counterfeiting, consumerism, technology, and globalized market growth have contributed to the diversification of counterfeits produced and consumed (Wilcox et al., 2009). Counterfeit consumer goods, including apparel, sportswear, pharmaceuticals, perfumes, toys, and aircraft components, have been used to satisfy lucrative illegal markets.
One of the factors behind the consumption of counterfeit products is price. Most counterfeit products are available at low costs, although with compromised quality. According to Rutter & Bryce (2008), counterfeits enable customers to acquire prestige at a minimum cost as opposed to purchasing quality at a high price. Higher social status is a primary goal that some customers pursue from counterfeits. They want to demonstrate their worth. However, consuming some of these products, such as pharmaceuticals, may have adverse health impacts on consumers. Counterfeit pharmaceuticals have far-reaching health implications and have attracted the attention of global health organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO).
The WHO defined counterfeit medical products as deliberate and fraudulent mislabeled medical products (Buckley & Gostin, 2013). The products may include correct ingredients in incorrect quantities or correct content but in fake packaging (Buckley & Gostin, 2013). The product may also be manufactured using the wrong formula and contain toxic substances and dangerous ingredients that could cause mass poisoning. Low-quality medicine compromises public health, causing disease progression, drug resistance, and death (Buckley & Gostin, 2013).
Consumer Complicit Behavior
Marketers believe that some consumers purchasing counterfeit products do so deliberately and would not be willing to pay the price of the genuine item. This is due to the low cost of fake products. In other words, price is the primary contributor to complicit consumer behavior in purchasing counterfeit items. Marketers also believe that counterfeits contribute to the brand's marketing without causing significant loss. This sloppy attitude increases counterfeiting of luxury goods in Europe (Da Cunha Brandão & Gadekar, 2019). For instance, the United Kingdom and Italy have become famous for counterfeit wear (Da Cunha Brandão & Gadekar, 2019). Most European people are motivated to purchase these products because of regular online advertisements. Wilcox et al.(2009) pinpointed that advertising is crucial in building a brand image. The rise in the advertisement of fake items through social media platforms has significantly encouraged consumers to opt for counterfeits.
Studies show that consumer accomplices: - the counterfeit product buyers, promote illegal trade through their willingness to demand fake it...