BRANDS have a ‘HALO’ – BRANDS also have ‘HORNS’

“Customers rationally weigh the pros and cons of competing products to select one that best fits their needs,” this is the classical economic view of consumer decision-making; but watch or ask anyone who has compulsively bought a giant block of “Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Silk” at 3:00 am and one realises that purchasing decisions are not always so logically driven. Consumers report a desire to buy sustainable products, but their purchasing decisions do not always reflect that desire.

The psychological processes that influence this intention-action gap are being explored through the field of decision neuroscience. Neuroscientists conduct experiments using tools such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to explore the activation of different brain regions. Certain regions of the brain are activated when a customer makes purchasing decisions. Scientists have observed reduced activation in the reward system in the brain when consumers are viewing ‘green’ ads.

Because consumers are not aware of their own psychological factors at play in decision-making, the best way to capture these processes is to use measures that don’t rely on a conscious response, such as reaction time measures, eye tracking or “fast” choice tasks. By coupling these with more traditional market research methods, such as surveys, one can paint a fuller picture of the rational and irrational components in the product-purchasing process.

Emotional intensity during the purchasing process can be monitored through physiological methods, including electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures brain waves; or galvanic skin response (GSR), which measures the amount of sweat conductance on the skin. These studies have indicated that ‘green’ consumer decision-making involves a high degree of emotional processing.

In a recent study a combination of eye tracking, biometrics, and EEG was used to explore the effect of food cues on consumer choices. The study first measured consumer responses to a variety of brands, creating a hierarchy of brand perceptions that ranged from “healthy” to “unhealthy.” Healthy and unhealthy brands were then paired with healthy or unhealthy foods and displayed to the consumer — for example; a McDonald’s salad represents an unhealthy brand selling a healthy food.

The study revealed two phenomena — the HALO effect, where people believe that the unhealthy foods marketed by healthy brands are better for them; and the HORNS effect, where consumers believe that the healthy products sold by unhealthy brands are more harmful to health. The study has implications for the obesity crisis, as consumers may be purchasing high-calorie foods from “healthy” brands without realizing that they have made an unhealthy choice. It is also possible that these two phenomena could also be at play in consumer perceptions of “sustainable” and “unsustainable” brands.

The consumers are willing to accept a black coloured (product attribute) toothpaste for making their teeth shining and pearly white but they may be unwilling to accept Woodland, Kiwi, Brasso, Silvo or CherryBlossom toothpaste. How about a Colgate Shoe polish?

(Fresh from the conclave of over 2000 representatives from the global community of Marketers and Neuroscientists on June 04, 2018 at Vancouver, Canada)

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