Current Topic: Research

Did you know consumers spend $5.400 per year on average on impulse purchases of food, clothing, household items, and shoes?

That shouldn’t be quite a surprise. In one way or another, everyone has experienced a sudden, often powerful, and persistent urge to buy something immediately. In most cases, this regards something we hadn’t planned for.

It could be that one time you visited your local grocery store and realized there had been a huge discount on your favorite Italian rice. Or that time you walked into a high-end jewelry shop and suddenly purchased that sparkling golden Swedish watch on the shelf, regardless of the financial risks involved.

Now that was our impulse buying urge in full effect.

So how can we trigger these inherent impulse buying desires that consumers already have to stimulate impulse purchases?

Most likely, you'll recognize that vague feeling when talking to a customer support chat service, that the "person" you're chatting with might actually be a computer. 

Indeed, the market size of chatbots is expanding: starting at $250 million in 2017, it will be more than $1.34 billion in 2024 (Pise, 2018). A chatbot is an automated speech generator that can respond to both written and auditory text. More than 21% of US adults and even more than 80% of generation Z (born between 1996 and 2010) use voice/text bots for information search and shopping.

Wat exactly makes communication ‘work’? And what does successful communication look like in the brain? The latest brain research shows it is not so much a matter of specific brain areas lighting up, but rather the degree to which multiple brains react in the same way.

Emoticons and emoji’s seem to be everywhere these days: In text messages from friends, in social media campaigns from major brands and even in e-mails from customer service representatives.

And that makes sense, right? They present an opportunity for companies to connect with their customers in a relatable and creative approach. Besides, according to a global survey conducted by Genesis; 40% of customers claim that the biggest improvement in customer service can be achieved through investing in a “better human service”. So why not use emoticons in customer service interactions in order to make them more human? 

Deciding whether or not to put a product in your shopping basket is often a split-second decision. If there’s one advantage neuromarketing has over traditional methods, it’s being able to measure objectively what happens during that split second.

One problem: the amount of research methods under the ‘neuromarketing’ umbrella grows ever more diverse. From skin conductance to EEG. From Facial Coding to Eye Tracking.

When deciding for a specific method, a marketer wants to know one single thing: how well does it predict actual purchase?