Forget RFID, We’ll Just Read Your Mind…
filed in Customer Experience, Marketing Technology on Jul.01, 2009
Whether you love technology or struggle to keep up with it, you have to admire how new developments push our limits. The limits I’m talking about are our imagination, our time, and our comfort zone.
Last year’s debate over the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is quickly giving way to a new battle front, “Neuromarketing“. While RFID devices were challenged by well organized consumer privacy groups such as Caspian for basic breaches of privacy, the revelations of of Neuromarketing seem capable of creating Supreme Court worthy debates.
Neuromarketing was profiled this week on CBS’s 60 Minutes and is explained as a technology that employs a specialized use of MRI scanning called “functional MRI,” fMRI for short. In layman’s terms, its proponents are touting that we will soon be able to see what is going on inside the brain and decipher what people are thinking.
RFID has been used by Walmart, the US Military and many others to bring efficiency to the supply chain and dollars to the bottom line. Contactless cards were introduced a few years ago in the US and misunderstanding of the technology’s limits has caused some consumers to buy wallets and purses that block signal transmission and others to simply panic that we are all marching headlong into an Orwellian future. The technology does have some risk, though rarely as it is portrayed by the media and consumer protection groups.
Neuromarketing carries a higher sniff test for risk just by virtue of the way it’s advocates describe it. Neuroscientist Marcel Just painted the benefits of the technology as “thought identification” on the 60 minutes segment and one of the leading companies in the industry, Neurosense, stated it has plenty of clients including “Unilever, Intel, McDonald’s, Proctor & Gamble, MTV or Viacom.” As there are purportedly about 92 neuromarketing agencies worldwide, it’s clear that a lot of resources are being applied to advance the cause.
Each of these technologies has application outside of consumer marketing and maybe that is just where they belong.The question in my mind is how the technology is put into practice in a sensible way that consumers will accept. I can understand that reading minds could be useful to validate live survey responses and focus group chatter. I can also see that a retailer could hone its inventory management by reading the thoughts of consumers passing by a display window with dresses in 3 colors and learning that the green model was most popular.
What I don’t envision is that consumers will accept their thoughts being translated into real-time store promotions or something similar. No matter how “relevant”, having a sales associate in the Apple store walk up and offer an unsolicited suggestion for the best case for your new iPhone strikes me as just plain creepy.
We’ve been down this road before with chip cards and RFID enabled devices. The premise that personalized service or personal shoppers could be anonymously triggered as the RFID-enabled loyalty card of a “best” customer passed the scanner at the store entrance was not appealing to any survey or focus group respondent I have ever encountered.
The only possible scenario that I consider practical is using a mobile device to opt-in or invite current promotions to be pushed to me before I entered a particular store. Let’s say I am ready to visit Nordstrom and am sitting in the food court having some coffee. If I could open the mobile marketing application on my iPhone listing all of my loyalty program memberships, select Nordstrom and click on “today’s deals”, I would be happy to have specific offers and specials sent to my mobile phone. I could also opt-in to “personal shopper” and, if I qualified in the loyalty program, I would trigger that service upon entering the store (GPS enabled phone, right?).
The debate will rage on and next year the argument may be substantially the same with a different device or technology filling in the blank occupied last year by RFID and today by Neuromarketing. If we keep in mind that business is driven by pleasing the customer and not about advancing a particular technology, then we will have an easier time choosing the path to success.
July 1st, 2009 on 11:14 am
Bill, I think your sentiments are spot on here. RFID has never caught on the way technology companies have intended. I think the cost issue around RFID has always made this a cost-prohibitive technology for most retailers. I think the consumer value proposition is terrible.
I see one key application that might be a compromise between the two. What about an opt-in program with blue-tooth enabled phones that give loyal customers the ability to click to get offers to their phone when they walk through the security panels in the entrance of the store. It’s better and way less expensive than RFID and doesn’t have the same downsides. Thoughts?
July 1st, 2009 on 11:25 am
Interesting idea but I doubt it’ll work. I’m all for RFID as a viable and worthwhile technology, but Neuromarketing strikes me as too much SciFi, too little reality. Creep it is, but I wouldn’t worry just yet.
July 1st, 2009 on 12:11 pm
Bill, I’m actually engaged in some neuroscience work at Maritz right now and am finding the whole field both intriguing and disconcerting, for all of the reasons you have noted above. In our work to apply it to consumer loyalty we’ve had vigorous discussions about how to ensure you do so in an ethical fashion, which is primarily done by putting the focus on what the consumer wants/needs first, rather than on the brand’s needs. But whether or not neuromarketing and fMRI scans become standard tools for loyalty marketers, here is my major takeaway from the current interest in the topic: marketers need to understand a whole lot more about human psychology, about how the brain really reacts to messages and offers, and how cognitive biases often drive us to make seemingly irrational choices. I think marketers are often working from really uninformed assumptions about how consumers think and that’s why many marketing strategies fall short. If the current focus on neuromarketing helps drive our field to embrace a more enlightened view of human psych, I think it will be a good thing.
July 1st, 2009 on 12:41 pm
Neuro-marketing seems to be the end all be all to me. However, it’s way to intrusive. There’s to much room for abuse. Ran across Tetherball the other day. They are running a mobile RFID campaign like the one you described.
The details are here: http://tetherball360.com/how.aspx
July 1st, 2009 on 1:39 pm
The idea of scanning the brains of unsuspecting consumers wandering through stores is far, far beyond the reach of current technology and in no way is the focus of development efforts.
Rather, current neuromarketing providers test willing volunteers much the same as focus groups do, with the difference being the way the data is collected.
Neuromarketing is perfectly in tune with the idea that “business is driven by pleasing the customer” – the end goal of neuromarketing studies is to develop products that consumers REALLY like and to create ads that don’t do more harm than good.
Roger
Neuromarketing – http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/
July 2nd, 2009 on 9:15 am
I think this would be an excellent anti terrorism device at airports and other places where terrorists are known to strike, it could prevent strikes and suicide bombers perhaps? If it could be done, then roll it out!
July 3rd, 2009 on 5:09 pm
My biggest concern with privacy breaches such as these ideas could create, is that consumers in a lesser economy will withdraw, completely, from the market. I worry that this age of technological science, as applied to understanding your customer base through ‘fact’ as ‘interpreted’ is irrespective of knowledge, and doesn’t allow for truth. The assumption of comprehension of an individual’s thoughts (not habits), without direct verification… seriously? Seems to me this would lead to a new era of bomb shelter mentality.
Neuromarketing, in my opinion, has its place; but not as perception of psychological competitive advantage through the use of technology.
July 9th, 2009 on 12:30 pm
Thanks for the insightful and concerned comments on Neuromarketing.
A few follow up thoughts: it is possible that the 60 Minutes feature stretched the capabilities of Neuromarketing as well as the intentions of marketers interested in the science. Roger’s comment “the idea of scanning the brains of unsuspecting consumers … is far beyond the reach of current technology” is a strong clarification from a leader in the space.
Barry Kirk set a fair bar for the expectations of Neuromarketing. Marketers can place unwarranted confidence on surveys that are casually completed by respondents and focus groups that are dominated by an opinionated personalities in the group. If there is a way to discern the “real” answers to questions in order to build confidence in marketing strategies, it would be a welcome result for most of us.
I also agree with Jonathan Treiber that any sort of technology that identifies consumers on-location via tracking technology, be it Bluetooth enabled phones, RFID stickers, or reading our minds (doubtful), will only be successful if consumers invite the intrusion.
Opt-in is a must. It has proven to be the path to success for SMS marketing and will most likely be mandatory for these more sophisticated marketing technologies to grab a foothold.
September 20th, 2009 on 2:30 pm
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