Ipsos Encyclopedia - Neuroscience
Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary field concerned with understanding the structure, function, and physiological correlates of the nervous system in order to study human cognition, emotion, and behavior. Its application in opinion and consumer research, often referred to as Consumer Neuroscience, seeks to leverage this understanding to better comprehend and predict human decision-making processes and emotional responses. The main goals include leveraging a multidisciplinary approach for market understanding, providing increased diagnostic and predictive value, and conducting research to identify key performance indicators for better understanding markets and societies.
At Ipsos, the focus is on utilizing neuroscience to gain a comprehensive understanding of society, markets, and people. By conducting foundational research to understand human decision-making and utilizing physiological measurements to unveil cognitive and emotional responses, Ipsos aims to explore dynamic decision-making and behavior change, quantify the value of integrating multichannel responses, and conduct neuroscience research to better understand people, markets, and societies.
Consumer Neuroscience is the result of applying neuroscience techniques to consumer research for a deeper understanding. It employs methodologies such as eye-tracking, facial affective response, galvanic skin response, response time and electroencephalography to directly capture physiological consumer responses to marketing stimuli. The goal is to improve the understanding of consumer behavior at different stages of the consumer experience.
The advantages of Consumer Neuroscience include building upon and going beyond customers' declarative responses, recording, and analyzing customers' physiological activity when exposed to stimuli, capturing transient processes people might not be aware of, and ruling out biases like strategic behavior and social desirability. However, it does not tell us why people develop the reactions we observe. Hence, the combination of physiological signals with other tools and fields of expertise provides the most holistic insights.
Despite some logistical limitations due to the nature of the hardware involved, the industry is working towards more scalable solutions. In this context, Ipsos has developed several scalable approaches for the measurement of human emotions and the detection of cognitive conflict, among other areas relevant for our clients.
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