Did you read Barry Schwartz’ book The Paradox of Choice - Why More is Less? If not, this sentence is your executive summary:

There is such a thing as having too much choice

There are many scientific studies on the subject. Some find having more choice enhances consumers’ assortment evaluation and increases purchase likelihood. Others conclude more choice negatively effects satisfaction and, again, purchase likelihood. 

When do we help someone? Helping is something social, and we often need help from others. Maybe you want help from a colleague on a rapport that’s due this Friday or maybe you want your children to clean their own mess up. Or maybe you want visitors on your website to fill out a Usabilla, Qualaroo or Hotjar survey. The point is, we need help from others and we don’t like asking for help, because it basically says that we’re not competent enough to perform the task on our own. Neuromarketing to the rescue!

Logo animation used to be hot. Over the last couple of years, companies have decided to back away from logo animation, and remove gradients and fillings. You’ve probably seen the logo evolutions of companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi and Shell – who all trimmed down the logo to the mere essentials.

Have you ever been part of a neuromarketing experiment where the researchers actually scanned your brain? How many people do you know that have been? Probably not too many. Still, there are heaps of neuromarketing articles too be found. All of us at New Neuromarketing are, of course, very happy with this, as it gives us much to write about.

But if we look closer at a multitude of this research, we notice that often behavioral or attitudinal data is used. Experiments investigate what people do, what they say they will do or how they feel. Especially the latter is slightly ironic, as an important basis of neuromarketing research as it was intended, is that people are horrible at predicting what they will do or at evaluating how they feel.

That is why researchers want to learn as much as they can about our brains, and what happens when we buy products, watch advertisements and interact with brands in other ways.

We don’t like to admit it, but as humans we do a pretty bad job at controlling our attention. Sure, we can actively choose to maintain or divert our focus after something has captured our attention. But we hardly understand why it grabbed our eyes in the first place.