Product Description
If You Understand Brain Basics, You'll Sell More As much as 95%
of our decisions are made by the subconscious mind. As a result,
the world's largest and most sophisticated companies are applying
the latest advances in neuroscience to create brands, products,
package designs, marketing campaigns, store environments, and
much more, that are designed to appeal directly and powerfully to
our brains.
The Buying Brain offers an in-depth exploration of how
cutting-edge neuroscience is having an impact on how we make,
buy, sell, and enjoy everything, and also probes deeper questions
on how this new knowledge can enhance customers' lives. The
Buying Brain gives you the key to
• Brain-friendly product concepts, design, prototypes, and
formulation
• Highly effective packaging, pricing, advertising, and in-store
marketing
• Building stronger brands that attract deeper consumer loyalty
A highly readable guide to some of today's most amazing
scientific findings, The Buying Brain is your guide to the
ultimate business frontier - the human brain.
Five Secrets of the Shopping Brain
Amazon-exclusive content from author A. K. Pradeep
Your brain -- and your customers’ – is 100,000 years
old. Its basic skills and functions are the same ones it
developed to survive on the plains of Africa so many millennia
ago. As such, the “modern” brain is occasionally at odds with
21st century life.
As it navigates through that life, your brain is like an
iceberg. Most of its decisions occur below the water line. Your
conscious mind contributes to making only about 5% of your
decisions. The subconscious mind makes the other 95%.
For most of our evolution, gathering food and fuel have been
primary objectives. That’s partly why shopping is, at its heart,
a primal activity. Here are some examples of how the subconscious
mind functions when shopping.
1) Your brain gets ed in some stores. Your conscious mind
doesn’t know it, of course, but your subconscious mind views
sharp corners as a threat. Every time you push a shopping cart
around the end of an aisle, your subconscious mind winces. The
cringe dates back to the earliest days of the modern brain, when
humans still roamed the Serenghetti. Think about it: you don’t
see many sharp angles in nature. When your subconscious mind
comes across straight lines and sharp angles, it’s hard-wired to
perceive them as a threat and prompts you to avoid them. Smart
retailers will learn to curve and soften their sharp corners
better to invite the buying brain in.
2) Too much of one thing can make your brain go blind.
“Repetition blindness” sets in when we see too many of the same
objects. Think about a wall of toothpaste boxes, all
approximately the same size and many sharing similar colors and
graphics. Confronted with this much “sameness,” your brain looks
for differences. When it can’t find enough variations, it blends
everything together, becoming “blind” to the individual packages
themselves. This is why we sometimes can’t see the trees for the
forest. In a sea of sameness, smart manufacturers will find a way
for their packaging to “pop” at the shelf.
3) Men and women are hard-wired to shop differently. Men shop
by looking for targets; women shop by looking for landmarks.
Women explore their territory; men make s.
4) Origin is important. The brain likes to see the source of
the product inside the package. It appreciates cows on milk
cartons, for instance, and grapes on bottles of wine.
5) Faces and eye contact fascinate the brain. The brain needs
to see faces to determine intent. Are you friend or foe? But the
brain also prefers ambiguous expressions on faces. It likes to
figure out the puzzle. What is s/he thinking or feeling? The Mona
Lisa is a perfect example of the power of ambiguity. Closer to
home, ambiguous faces on packaging and promotions are like
magnets to the shopping brain.