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We like to think that human consumer behaviour is leaded by rational thoughts, that we are able to analyze, pounder and arrive to buying decisions knowing what the best for us is, through a perfect rational analysis. 

Well I’m sorry to tell you that this conclusion is far away from reality. What we know today is that human brain cannot make 100% rational decisions. In any decision – making process our emotions are included. The buying process always implies an emotional component attached. Neuromarketing helps to understand the real reasons behind a buying process and this leads to understand our customers real needs.

The eye tracking technique is one very effective way to uncover what is really impacting the brain of our customers. We are paying attention to products, for instance in a store, that we are not conscious that we have interested in. We can be definitely more helpful to our clients in making a correct buying process.

Carlos Davidovich, MD

The application of Neuroscience in Consumer Behaviour is called Neuromarketing. It is described as the art of synchronizing the science of the brain with consumer behaviour, offering the best hope for understanding and therefore influencing, in a positive way, the buying process. Better said, the relationship of our current and potential clients with our products.

Is it enough asking them what they want? Now we know that the traditional way to find out about customers preference, like focus groups, surveys, etc.; is full of unconscious biases. Their responses hardly reflect what they really want. Nowadays we can leverage technology and science to decipher the real meaning of our consumer behaviours.  

Carlos Davidovich, MD

The conception of Neuromarketing for pharmacies matches with the current industry trend. Retail shops have started to penetrate the market of healthcare and sell not only goods, but also OTC-medicaments and biological supplements. At the same time pharmacies are catching the trend from retail shops. New laws are cutting into the margins of pharmacies and they start to be more focused on marginal products, which people can buy without any prescription from a physician (Phoenix Group, 2018). In this case customers always have a “free will” (Krajnovic, et al., 2012) to decide about purchasing and pharmacies can enhance a profit.

From another point of view, Neuromarketing for pharmacies is not about “buy more”, it’s about “buy in our pharmacy, but not from competitor”. This conception can be realized with agreement with ethics and will let pharmacies make an accent on uniqueness and customer care.

Neuromarketing shouldn't be used for increasing sales of Rx medicaments, must be carefully used for OTC drugs (it depends on the category) and the most suitable for parapharmaceutical products (toothpaste, cosmetics etc.), which customer can buy not only in pharmacy, but in retail shops, as well.

Yulia Prozherina, Ph.D. in Neurophysiology,
MBA, NMSBA member

In XXI century retail pharmacies have collided with a period of fierce competition between each other. New digital technologies and e-health companies with innovative models are beginning to integrate into areas within traditional pharmacy business and practice model. Moreover, in some countries retail shops have started to penetrate the market of healthcare and sell not only goods, but also OTC-medicaments and biological supplements. Simultaneously inflation and economic crisis in some countries leads to the weakening of purchasing power of consumers. All these factors make competition stronger and force pharmacies to reduce their profit margins (Fong D.J., 2017).

In these conditions traditional pharmacies have to find new solutions to enhance profit and attract clients. For this aim independent pharmacies more and more often unite in officinal or non-officinal associations or trying to work with manufacturers of medicaments by direct contracts to save the costs (Phoenix Group, 2018), but in conditions of strong competition it’s not enough. One of the most important steps on this way can be creating the right business strategy, which may include original marketing techniques and, especially, Neuromarketing. At the same time Neuromarketing for pharmacies should be quite different from the one for retail shops, because of strong importance of ethical component. Neuromarketing, as a new science of consumer behavior (Morin, 2011), may help pharmacists understand their customers better and recognize their needs.

Yulia Prozherina, Ph.D. in Neurophysiology,
MBA, NMSBA member

One of the most interesting and fundamental tool for the Neuromarketing techniques is an eye track. Researchers collect eye-tracking data by using special eye-trackers, which can detect the location of the pupil of the eye in fragments of time (Cerf & Garcia-Garcia, 2017).

There are several types of mobile devices for exploring the environment on the market, which are remote and headmounted eye-trackers. Different types of stationary (remote) eye-tracking devices can be used for testing the information on the desktop screen. The system of headmounted eye-tracker includes a world camera and a special camera for analysing pupil movements (iMotions, 2019).

The eye-tracking technology allows to analyse different patterns of eyes’ movements (fixing item, saccade linear mapping, duration settings etc.). The aim of using eye-track in Neuromarketing is based on theories of “perceptual fluency” and “conceptual fluency”. These concepts are explaining the reason to remember a brand on the unconcious level after being in contact with it, because all visual information comes to brain through the eyes (Valencia, 2017).

Eye-tracking technology can help to analyse where consumers look at and what kind of individual products they examine. It’s important to recognise what catches consumers’ attention, because human brain automatically fixes the eyes on the area, which is going to analyse. Because of it is so useful to create a visible advertisement or put the product on the right place on the shelf.  

Eye-tracking data are very similar to EEG or fMRT data in its making, but it easier to dissect. Because of it, this technology is becoming more and more useful among marketing managers and can be ideal for different studies (Cerf & Garcia-Garcia, 2017).

Yulia Prozherina, Ph.D. in Neurophysiology,
MBA, NMSBA member

Neuromarketing opens a new opportunity to measure physiological processes and different reactions to understand consumers’ behavior from the scientific point of view.

Key Neuromarketing measurment tools can be subdivided into 2 main groups. The first one group is based on methods for recording brain activity. The second one includes methods that pick up other recording and infer the brains’ activity from it.

An electroencephalography (EEG), positron emission tomography (PET), functional magnetic resonance images (MRI), steady state topography (SST), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be used for measuring the brain activity. Biometric and other recordings, which can be applied to Neuromarketing include the method of eye tracking (ET), facial coding, implicit association test (IAT), electroepidermal activity (EDA or GRS) and different biometric reactions such as a heart rate, respiration rate etc. (Cerf & Garcia-Garcia, 2017; Prozherina, 2019).

Yulia Prozherina, Ph.D. in Neurophysiology,
MBA, NMSBA member

We can infinitely debate about the human origins and theory of evolution. At the same time, it’s a quite obviously that both human’s and animal’s brains have some similar structures which are responsible for similar functions.

According to MacLean theory, one of the oldest parts of the brain symbolically indicated as a reptilian brain. It is located in dorsal and central parts of the brain and responsible for vital reactions, such an eating, drinking, sexual and defensive behaviour.

The function of emotional (limbic) brain is protecting from dangers and achieving the satisfaction of needs on the emotional level. It’s not a secret that the key task of emotional brain is searching for the possibilities of a peasure.

Finally, neocortex is responsible for thinking, speech, intellect and analysing of all information which comes from the sensor systems (from eyes, ears etc.). 

From the point of view of Neuromarketing, emotional and reptilian brains have the key impact on the final humans’ decision, despite of evolution of the neocortex (Valencia E., 2017; Cerf  M. & Garcia-Garcia M., 2017). It’s especially become clear in stressful, critical situations or even during the process of making decision.  Because of it we are still so close to reptilians…

Yulia Prozherina, Ph.D. in Neurophysiology,
MBA, NMSBA member

Neuromarketing is a new scientific and practical knowledge, which can be defined as a hybrid between methods of traditional marketing with neuroscience (Nielsen & Fibaek, 2014).

It applies techniques from neuroscience on traditional market research activity. As result,  Neuromarketing brings the new opportunities to marketers because of opening the secrets of buying decision.

The aim of Neuromarketing is not to manipulate people’s behaviour, but to better understand clients’ needs and reactions to different stimulus. This knowledge can be useful for creating optimal marketing strategies to attract customers’ attention (Cerf & Garcia-Garcia, 2017).

                                                                                           Yulia Prozherina, Ph.D. in Neurophysiology,
 MBA, NMSBA member