Neuromarketing : No Brain, No Gain!

Businesses to survive, always strive to better themselves through continuously keeping up with trends and continuously improving processes. Understanding the consumer is becoming more difficult now due to the increase in customer numbers, products, competitors and shorter reaction time. Since the consumer is at the centre of the market, it is actually impossible to launch a successful product without properly understanding the consumer. Traditional marketing techniques do not analyze 99.99% of the human's brain, being the subconscious part; which is where decision making occurs. This is the reason why, according to Lindstrom (2008), 80% of new product launches fail within a few months. However, it is better, as noted by Onay (2016); for marketing researchers to have a clear understanding of the abstractions held in the customer's mind. Most successful companies today are using neuromarketing primarily because of the competitive advantage this methodology offers. This study uncovers the neurological aspects of market research which have been largely neglected in traditional marketing research. The study concludes with a discussion on the professional challenges and ethical issues in neuromarketing and recommendations on the way forward