NeuroRelay » Book Reviews

Decoding the Irrational Consumer (Book Review)

NeuroRelay — Sun, 29 Nov 2015 17:20:40 +0000

Below you can read the book review of Decoding the Irrational Consumer (author Darren Bridger, published in 2015) that I wrote for publication for the 14th issue of Neuromarketing Theory & Practice Magazine (published by Neuromarketing Science & Business Association in November2015).
Despite the wide variety of neromarketing books that were published in the last few years, due to the worldwide development of consumer neuroscience research, the public still needs comprehensive guides in order to have a better understanding of this interdisciplinary field that combines knowledge from neuroscience, economics, social and cognitive psychology, computer modeling, big data processing and aesthetics. The latest acquisition on our shelves is Decoding the Irrational Consumer by Derren Bridger, published in 2015 by Kogan Page in the Marketing Science series, which is described since the foreword by Prof. Thomas Z. Ramsoy as a book that brings clarity in this vast cluster of this emerging field and helps the reader better understand the tools that are available, what are their added value and limitations, but also how consumer behavior can be deciphered.
The book consists of three main parts that ease the reader the path to understanding neuromarketing research basics: theoretical insights, the new research tools and at the end putting it all together by explaining the aim of computational neuroscience and of combining the techniques in order to obtain real insights. The theoretical part includes the main principles and constructs such as attention, memory, emotion, embodied cognition, processing fluency, familiarity, priming, motivation, associative memory webs, multi-sensory integration or mirroring. Of most relevance to the reader is the approach of cognitive neuroscience that is highlighted within the presented findings from psychological experiments that are in concordance with data on people’s brain and bodily responses. Another hot topic discussed by Derren Bridger is choice architecture, the process of structuring or framing options in such a way as to influence the likely outcome.
The valuable feature of the content of this book is that the author not only details the tools used nowadays in neuromarketing research, but he also offers basic principles of neuro-testing that should be respected by any researcher, in terms of recruitment and cultural differences, benchmarking and normalizing, understanding the differences between a controlled environment such as a laboratory, online and real-world testing and also sets a few interesting points that should be considered in such experiments. Eye tracking (understanding whether a package pops out on shelf and which positions of ads in a publication or web page are most likely to get viewed), implicit response measures (measuring the comparative qualities that people associate with a brand and its competitors; measuring the ability of an ad to communicate the messages, feelings and concepts it was intended to), facial coding (if an ad is intended to evoke emotions, how well does it do so, at which moments and how well in comparison to alternative versions), biometrics (measuring the ability of an ad to create strong levels of emotional arousal), neuro-measures using functional magnetic resonance imaging (understanding the overall performance of an ad, the specific feelings and reactions it produces and predicting its likely marketplace performance), electroencephalography (measuring the flow of viewer attention through an ad or the cognitive load of an experience or task) or steady state topography (understanding the elements of an ad that are likely to be best remembered) are all discussed and presented using case studies. It is also emphasized the importance of computational neuroscience and of the predictive models that allow researchers to draw conclusions and my personal opinion is that the evolution of machine learning algorithms is the main key to further knowledge and understanding of the consumer using technology. Consumers are limited in their ability to verbally express the underlying attitudes and motivations that are driving their behavior, but by combining the techniques previously mentioned it is now possible to break the borders of understanding our nonconscious processes.
The theories, case studies and tools presented in this book underpin marketers, ad creators, designers and neuroscientists that are using neuroscience to better understand the consumer. These ideas can both help in forming hypotheses for testing, in making sense of study results or in understanding the ease with which we process information, the biases we have about value and associations activated in our minds without conscious awareness. The book opens the neuromarketing toolbox a little more to the wide audience, as it introduces the main theories that forms the base of this field of research and then presents each tool, the ideas that make it work and what can be done with it.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (Book Review)

NeuroRelay — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 16:35:01 +0000

Below you can read the book review of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (author Nir Eyal, published in 2014) that I wrote for publication for the 13th issue of Neuromarketing Theory & Practice Magazine (published by Neuromarketing Science & Business Association in August 2015).
The technologies we use have turned into compulsions and impulses felt throughout the day to check a message notification on our favorite social platform without a conscious thought on this urge. Research even suggests that people check their phones 34 times per day, so our actions have been engineered by product developers. Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover call these series of experiences “hooks” and explain how these can profoundly change user behavior and form habits in their latest book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”, published in 2014.
The book is the result of distilled research and real-world experience, proposing a new framework: the Hook Model. This is a four-phase process companies use to form habits and reach their ultimate goal of unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. This circular process proposed by the authors reinforces the user connection with each iteration throughout it’s steps:

(1) Trigger (internal or external alerts linked to existing behaviors and emotions that form a need)

(2) Action (the actual behavior)

(3) Variable Reward (a powerful tool depending on the hook’s ability to create a craving)

(4) Investment (implies an action that improves the service for the next go-around and occurs when the user puts something into the product of service such as time, data, effort, social capital or money).

Habit-forming products often start as nice-to-haves (vitamins) but once the habit is formed, they become must-haves (painkillers).

Each chapter of the book includes at the end a section of takeaways that reinforce the main ideas presented previously. Moreover, the authors also offer a “Do This Now” section that guide the steps of the readers in building a habit-forming product by themselves and instigate them to act or to better understand consumer behavior by meditating or brainstorming on different aspects presented in the book.
The authors use examples from real life or advertising campaigns in order to explain each step of the Hook Model and they even provide a few fundamentals of how the mind works. Also, some constructs that are well-known to us, the neuromarketing books and articles readers, as the effects of scarcity, framing, anchoring, endowed progress or reward, which are also presented in Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Every behavior is driven by one of the following core motivators: seeking pleasure or avoiding pain, seeking hope and avoiding fear, seeking social acceptance while avoiding social rejection. As social behavior is a hot topic for research nowadays with the evolution of the social platforms, the cases presented include analysis on the triggers used by Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Snapchat, Stack Overflow, Codecademy, video games, movies, sports or even the Bible App to form habits.
I especially enjoyed reading about how the authors unpacked the triggers used by Instagram in order to form strong associations: what was once a brief distraction became an intraday routine for many users. Also the Bible app provides an example of how a far less engaging product can make use of triggers (annotations, bookmarks, highlights), action instigation (by adding an audio version) and variable rewards (separating the verses into small chunks, users not knowing what the next verse will be). As a takeaway, we learn that by identifying where your technology is lacking, you can focus on developing improvements to your product where it matters most. Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover also discuss a sensible subject as the morality of influencing user behavior and at the end they propose how to use the model in order to enhance our product’s habit-forming potential.
Hooks connect the user’s problem with a company’s solution frequently enough to form a habit and the Hook Model explains the rationale behind the design of many successful habit-forming products and services we use daily and can become a practical tool for entrepreneurs and innovators who aim to use habits. Anyone interested to develop products that engage the users can use the actionable insights shared by the authors in order to increase the odds of success and gain a significant competitive advantage.
The book not only includes many practical insights for driving customer engagement, but it actually coaches the reader on applying them on any product or project, taking the theory to direct application and guiding him in designing habits to benefit the users.

Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience (Book Review)

NeuroRelay — Sat, 02 May 2015 11:24:46 +0000

Below you can read the book review of Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience (by Michael S. Gazzaniga, published in 2015) that I wrote for publication for the 12th issue of Neuromarketing Theory & Practice Magazine (published by Neuromarketing Science & Business Association in May 2015).
Michael S. Gazzaniga is one of the fathers of cognitive neuroscience and an internationally recognized neuroscientist. In his latest book Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience, he offers us a detailed overview of his research life and work on the most known couple in neuroscience: left brain and right brain. His great contribution in the history of neuroscience is the revolutionary split-brain theory, which states that the right and left hemispheres of the brain can act independently from each other. Steven Pinker notes in the foreword that “Mike Gazzaniga is known for his monumental discoveries and for midwifing the field of cognitive neuroscience, but he is also known for showing that science is compatible with all the other good things in life“.
From this memoir of a leading neuroscience researcher I enjoyed that the book highlights not only the discoveries, but also the contribution of the collaborators with which the author has tied friendships. This scientific journey presents the change of focus of the author from split brain research on animals to the study of epileptic patients who went under surgery to control intractable seizures. From this, it was only a step until he could describe his stunning realization that his first human subject’s “right brain completed an act of which his own left hemisphere had no knowledge“. Actually, two separate minds were functioning in the same body, and this development in knowledge is the basis of understanding how normal brains use parallel processes in order to process information and make decisions.
Tales from Both Sides of the Brain is a 448 pages scientific autobiography that tells the story of the author’s life in science and points out the peak experiences in his life, such as: his ambitious character as an undergraduate at Dartmouth, his membership of “Animal House” fraternity, his graduate student life at California Institute of Technology, the first experiments he conducted or how the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience was born. The book also highlights his split-brain patients (study participants with disconnecting left and right hemisphere) and their collaboration, but also the brilliant researchers that participated in research are multiple times appreciated in the book, as Gazzaniga understands that they are the ones that allowed the researcher get to his discoveries. The author’s life has been sprinkled with “incredible characters, some famous; many great scientists; and some captivating split-brain patients. They all played a part in the evolution of my understanding of the overriding question: How on earth does the brain enable mind?“.
The book focuses on “six split-brain patients who have changed how we think about how the brain carries out its work“, according to the author, as these research subjects are the center of his scientific life. Michael S. Gazzaniga changed the field on brain research with his theory that originated with an experiment detailed in the book where he observed that the right brain of a study participant completed an act of which his own left hemisphere had no knowledge. The answer for this continues to be the focus of his current research and after 50 years of science dedicated to searching for the brain’s Morse code, the author considers that “humans may have discovered some of the constraints on the thought processes, but we have not yet been able to tell the full story“.
Tales from Both Sides of the Brain: A Life in Neuroscience is written in an entertaining and accessible style, using everyday language to describe complex processes, and although the main focus is on the origins of split-brain research and investigating if each hemisphere of the brain could learn independently from the other, it reveals how science is done: with collaboration, information sharing, ups and downs, ambition and the struggle for finding answers. I highly recommend this book not only to the people with an interest in neuroscience, but also to anyone involved in research, as it brings a human touch to science and inspiration to the reader.

Introduction to Neuromarketing & Consumer Neuroscience (Book Review)

NeuroRelay — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 21:09:46 +0000

Below you can read the book review of Introduction to Neuromarketing & Consumer Neuroscience (by Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy, published in 2014) that I wrote for publication for the 11th issue of Neuromarketing Theory & Practice Magazine (published by Neuromarketing Science & Business Association).
This fall marks the start of the first consumer neuroscience online course on Coursera.org, having as instructor Professor Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy from Copenhagen Business School. As a basis for this course, Thomas Ramsøy published Introduction to Neuromarketing & Consumer Neuroscience, providing the reader with an introduction to the basic brain mechanisms in consumer choice, but most important, how current knowledge can inform our understanding of consumption behavior.
The author explores different constructs that are vital in neuromarketing research, such as: sensation, perception, attention, consciousness, emotion, feeling, memory, learning, motivation, preference, decision making, also offering up to date information about how neuroscience can be applied to assess consumer cognition and emotion.

From the beginning of the book, Ramsøy warns the reader that neuromarketing and consumer neuroscience is nothing like pulling a software solution off the shelf and just start running studies. In order to understand the brain and the consumer, the author first kills the simplistic view of the mind and brain by showing how reverse inference can lead to false results. As he underlines, applying neuroscience requires hard work, knowledge of the brain, scientific and methodological verification, but also hardware, software and statistics. The author also provides a list of some of the most notable academic journals that publish neuromarketing findings and acknowledges the importance of NMSBA in the development of the field.
In one of the chapters, the author explains the functions related to consumer behavior for the most important brain structures, their names and localizations, but he also offers details on the deep structures of the brain and the neurochemistry of the brain cells. The book offers an overview of how brain structures can encompass multiple function when it comes to emotions.
I especially enjoyed reading the chapter that presents the neuromarketing toolbox for academic and commercial study of consumers. It presents the most useful methods employed nowadays with examples, graphics and interfaces from the studies conducted by the author, his collaborators or other well knows researchers and companies worldwide. This is the part of the book that will not only leave you with the desire and curiosity to deploy by yourself such studies, but will also explain in a comprehensive manner how each method is used and which kind of insights it provides.
Introduction to Neuromarketing & Consumer Neuroscience is an essential read for students and researchers that use neuroscience in their current studies or plan using it in the future. The style in which the book is written is perfectly suited to the teaching modules in the field of neuromarketing and the references provided are of great value. Business managers might find it also a nice reference for understanding the consumer decision making and how their business could benefit from using neuromarketing research.

Designing for Behavior Change (Book Review)

NeuroRelay — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 11:16:09 +0000

Below you can read the book review of Designing for Behavior Change – Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics (Stephen Wendel, published in 2013 by O’Reilly Media) that I wrote for publication for the 10th issue of Neuromarketing Theory & Practice Magazine (published by Neuromarketing Science & Business Association).
We often come across surprising cases of how the mind works and how we make decisions that interfere with our own and other people’s behavior. Just a few of the products available on the market touch millions of lives and have the potential to profoundly change society for the better by helping us get in shape, save for the future, or become active in our communities on the issues we care about. The decisions product managers and designers make can affect the entire life cycle of a product, but also consumers’ lives.
The behavioral social scientist Stephen Wendel decided to present the challenges he faced along the way in Designing for Behavior Change – Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics. The book provides examples from research studies in psychology and behavioral economics on how changing small aspects of our environment can radically affect our behavior. Each theory is followed by a section that contains basic “lessons for behavioral products”, where the author presents his comments and views about thinking strategically on behavior change and undertaking the design process itself.
The book covers an overview of currently available research on how our minds make decisions and presents some of the most important theories and models used in behavioral research, such as Daniel Kahneman’s theory about System 1 and System 2 or Antonio Damasio’s work on emotions. The author adds his own views and gives not-so-obvious lessons from the literature, helping the reader to gain a broader perspective on decision making and its applications in designing and refining products and interfaces that can set up the preconditions for action.
The book was an engaging read, as there are many studies presented together with the consequences of their results in the real world of product development. However, I was expecting to encounter many of the brain studies that have a major impact on this topic. Instead, the only brain scan study mentioned was the one with the information provided on cigarettes packaging that trigger the habit of smoking.
At the end of the book, Wendel provides a glossary of terms in the the chapters, an extensive bibliography, but also a list of resources to learn more about the discussed topics. These resources point to different research articles, books or blogs about persuasive technology, behavior models, neuro-web design, interactive design tricks, or behavioral economics and decision making in general. The style this book is written in betrays the research background of the author, as he explains each construct and offers details from a broad array of studies, extracting afterwards high-level lessons about building products in the real world and making the best use of the powerful, though still quite limited, knowledge that is available on behavior and decision making. As the author mentions, “Research on product design that can help change behavior is still in its infancy. This book pulls together the best of what is currently known, but is certainly not complete“.
Stephen Wendel provides a practitioner’s framework for experimentation and learning, without claiming that anyone fully understands the decision-making process. This framework guides the product design effort in the right direction and prepares the resulting product for testing, evaluation and refinement. The book is targeted for product designers and developers, user interfaces designers or innovators and it is a must read for anyone interested in behavioral science, the decision making process or how to design products that change behavior.

Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research (Book Review)

NeuroRelay — Sat, 28 Jun 2014 14:15:06 +0000

Below you can read the book review of Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research (by Horsley, M., Toon, N., Knightm B., Reilly, R., published in 2014) that I wrote for publication for the 9th issue of Neuromarketing Theory & Practice Magazine (published by Neuromarketing Science & Business Association).
It has always been a challenge to understand how we view, see and experience the world in an objective manner. Nowadays researchers make new findings about the way our visual system works and interacts with attention, perception and cognition, offering insights into understanding human behavior. Our eyes select and sample visual information and they move, on average, three to four times per second, while we are unaware of this. New technology allows researchers to record data and obtain moment-to-moment information for the behavior the observed person engages in. Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research (Springer, 2014) presents a wide range of recent research studies of over 55 researchers and academics that currently use this method.
What sets this book apart is the treasure of case studies. The book focuses on lessons learned in conducting eye movement research across different institutions, settings and disciplines, presenting innovative uses of existing technology as well as pioneering implementation of new technology in different research contexts or key challenges encountered in moving from raw data to findings.

The book is divided into four sections and each provides a central theme that gathers a series of chapters that come with a rich list of references that can strengthen the reader’s knowledge on that particular topic. Each chapter stands by itself, so readers can choose to read them in the desired order. A series of chapters in the book provide details of different novel applications of eye tracking in market research and present fundamental research findings on how to link eye tracking with EEG data or other forms of data, discussing current approaches for this alignment which are of real value to neuromarketing researchers that struggle in this integration process. Neuromarketers will find helpful especially the chapters focused on mobile eye tracking used in retail research and the use of eye movements research in marketing. With the advent of new observational technologies such as mobile eye tracking that captures consumers’ audio-visual attention, it is now possible to explore different environments and provide new insight into naturalistic shopping behavior (when reading complex visual displays, for example). After reading the book, you will get the impression that there are still so many paths to be discovered in this area of research.
In market research, eye-tracking technologies have been used to understand consumer cognitive and emotional responses to advertising communications, focusing on impact of branding, images and text in media, such as print and feature advertisements, billboards, product labeling, TV commercials and supermarket shelving. From this book, we find out that researchers have identified correlations between visual attention and, for example, frequency and duration of fixations and product preferences.
The book not only presents case studies and results, but it also helps researchers understand, for example how to improve the accuracy of the data, how to correctly calibrate the data being recorded with the stimuli, how to use the equipment, or how to read and correlate the data from gaze plots, heat maps and fixation analysis with the measures from neuronal correlates. Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research is an essential read for researchers (from both academic and business area) that use eye tracking in their current studies or plan using it in the future. Business managers might find it also a nice reference in order to understand the current development and use of eye tracking and how their business could benefit from it.