In case you missed it, the current issue of the scientific journal Neuron reports that researchers are now able to view the brain activity of people in the throes of making a purchase decision and accurately predict whether or not they’ll actually buy the product or service under consideration.
The article states that a region of the brain called the nucleus accumbens is activated when people see something they want to purchase. If the price turns out to be too steep, however, then another region of the brain, called the insula, kicks into high gear and a third region shuts down. Or something like that. I'm not a brain surgeon. All I know is that all this neural circuitry activity shows up on a brain scan as clearly as the ringing of a cash register.
The fact that researchers can determine whether a person will purchase something even before he or she is fully conscience of making the decision is pretty amazing. The discovery has obvious implications in the context of interactive marketing, given that a key driver of such programs usually involves figuring out which levers are at the forefront of the consumer’s purchase decision.
Of course, marketers probably won’t have much luck convincing consumers to attach electrodes to their scalps as they browse different product offers in order to gain insights into, say, price optimization. So it may be a while before the discovery has commercial application.
In the meantime, marketers have another way to understand what considerations drive customer purchase decisions on an individual basis. It involves having a conversation. That's right. It's as simple as asking customers relevant questions about themselves while giving them a good reason to want to share their personal information.
That’s the main point of a new article I wrote about the quid pro quo of customer data collection. It discusses how companies are combining various incentives with advanced analytics and increasingly sophisticated technologies like dynamic survey engines and rules decision systems to build more actionable customer profiles.
What I don't mention in the article is that marketers will eventually embrace voice—asking questions verbally as an alternative to using text-based interfaces—to make the conversations seem more real. As it happens, my friends at Jellyvision are pioneers in Interactive Conversation Interface, which is designed to create and maintain the illusion of human-like awareness, to make it feel like a prerecorded character is actually talking and listening to you. Their website provides some great examples of the future of interactive conversation.
In the article, I explain that a data-driven relationship should mimic an interpersonal relationship to the extent that it should evolve as a series of repeated interactions that accumulate over time into a positive memory of experiences. This means asking questions at various iterations, over the course of the relationship. And it means making sure that the responses to the questions result in meaningful conversation along the way—conversation that eventually translates into positive brand experiences.
And if you don't believe me, you don't know jack.