Advice given to SMME on Neuroscience and visual Marketing how these Influence consumer’s Decision making
Small medium and micro enterprises(SMME’s) play a critical role in the development of the country’s economies. It is one of the business “wings” that gives opportunities to the youth of South Africa that is unemployed. More often than not it is the very young unemployed people that end up becoming entrepreneurs. These enterprises are established to curb the social ills of the society, however, they are faced with many stumbling blocks, such as Capital as well as how to market the products to the prospectus buyers.
It is against this background that I wish to give a brief advice to the SMME’s on how neuromarketing could assist them to study the behavior of the consumers for the products or services they wish to put on the market. Noting very well the fact that they are competing with the big giants that have been in existence for some time and that they are well established.
It is hoped that with a better understanding of how consumers behave towards a product or service, it will trigger an emotion in the customer and decision-making will be faster when using neuromarketing.
First let us understand what it means: “Neuromarketing” loosely refers to the measurement of physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers’ motivations, preferences, and decisions. Its most common methods are brain scanning, which measures neural activity, and physiological tracking, which measures eye movement and other proxies for that activity(Harvard Business Review 2019)
An important aspect in the process of influencing the consumers’ decision making is analysing the consumer’s behaviour so as to ensure that you capture the correct target market effectively. Carefully studying and understanding the customer’s mind is a strategy that a SMME can adopt to increase its revenue. If SMME’s could use neuroscience to locate the consumer’s “buy button”, then they would be closer to opening the “black box” of the consumer’s mind(Moore 2005).
The use of neuroscience model will yield a unfathomable understanding of decision making that leads to the expansion of more effective decision benefits and interventions. It adds value to the decision-making by pleasing to the eye ability to make inference beyond the usual variable and models.
In pursuit of capturing the consumer’s attention it is also crucial to incorporate enticing visuals, scent or even music into one’s strategy of influencing the consumer’s decision to buy. When the potential buyer walks into your place of work( where business is undertaken) there should be attractive display of whatever product is being sold. The writings on the wall should be easy to read or website of the business should be very inviting to the end user. It should evoke an emotion or feeling. I would like to make an example of a confectionary shop a small business in the township. In this type of business it would be advisable to have baked cookies and beautiful cakes displayed strategically and visibly, also the smell of freshly baked goodies is another trigger for buyers to walk in which also calls for indulging impulsive buying.
Another attraction is the customer care given to customers when they come through to buy. People always go back to where they felt they were treated well, this creates repeat customer and more free advertising through word of mouth which is important for business.
Neuroscience scanning equipment can be expensive for upcoming or small enterprises, it is therefore important for a SMME to pay close attention to its customer’s reactions from the time they walk in, until they leave the store, studying their body-language. This could work to their advantage as the big stores do not have the time to interact with individual customers, which SMME’s could leverage on. A note to remember as a small enterprise, you have less than three(3) seconds to capture a clients’ attention.
