Management guru Peter Drucker had long ago pointed out that innovation and marketing were the two basic tasks of management, probably the reason why we have various models and frameworks of marketing all around us.

However, in today’stimes, with the new advances in neuroscience, ‘neuro management’ has become a potential business tool for marketers. An increasingly large number of companies are using neuro management research services to measure consumer thoughts on their advertisements and products.

Emotions, feelings, mood and expectation of the target group are essential parameters for building a brand. Most brands are positioned keeping in mind their mood enhancing capabilities. The major thinking part of human activity takes place in the subconscious area of the brain that is beyond the levels of controlled awareness. The perception technologists of the market aim to tap this very information to effectively manipulate the subconscious brain activity.

Researching Ads

For example, advertisements play an important role in promotion of any product. Whether it is a half-an-hour of television soap or a two hours movie, viewers are exposed to a varied range of commercials during the breaks. Hence, a lot of research and risk is involved in developing the right kind of advertisements that would attract the consumers and will be able to create a lasting impression in their minds.

Whys and hows

IIM – Ranchi, in collaboration with Central Institute of Psychiatry (CIP), Ranchi, has introduced the Centre for Neuro Management to facilitate learning on the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of human behaviour. The primary objectives are to integrate managerial concepts with neuroscience thereby developing scientific strategies to explain consumer behaviour. It includes decision-making and risk-taking behaviour with a focus on customers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective responses.

The Institute has been closely working with CIP to develop an expertise in this area and aims to develop managerial talent required by the industry that appreciates and understands real-life business issues. Technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography and steady state topography are used to measure changes in activity in parts of the brain and also one’s psychological state to gain valuable insight to consumer decision-making patterns.

Presently research has been conducted to study brain activation during television commercials to develop a scientific explanation as to what type of advertisements create an impact on the consumers. In essence, we can very well predict that future neurological studies will guide us to a better understanding of the role of the brain and emotions in marketing and will effectively explain as to why some marketing strategies needs to be rejected and the others enhanced and practised.

(The author is a first-year student at Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi.)

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