Thinking Beyond Science

A powerful branding strategy impels people to talk about the brand and generate referrals, banking mostly upon the human desire to imitate others. The bottom line is that it eases our consumer experience by making an emotional connection and making the experience emotionally rewarding.

Our brains want the certainty of a strong brand; our brains feel rewarded neurophysiologically with increases in the levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin that gets triggered with a liked brand. Our brains conserve energy with brands; our brains (and therefore, we) feel secure with a preferred brand. In some ways, if brands did not exist, our brains would create brands, whether offline or online, as brands satisfy the need within our brains to create and/or see patterns.

Arguably, as more commerce moves online and people’s brains being wired to want to connect (if not to people, then to objects), the need for brands in the brain will rise even more.

The first thing that a brand does is that it enables recognition. People tend to do business with companies they recognize and can identify with. If your branding is consistent and easy to recognize, it can help people feel at ease purchasing your products or services. Recognition brings about a sense of familiarity that reduces the customer’s perception of the risk involved in engaging in your brand (making a person feel more secure and increasing the serotonin in the brain) and thus enhances their purchasing experience.” A strong brand helps customers know what to expect. A brand that is consistent and clear puts the customer at ease, because they know exactly what to expect each and every time they experience the brand. Surprises are not always welcome in scenarios like banking, housing, transportation, etc. On top of that, with age, our tendency to engage in risky propositions declines significantly? Branding helps develop a relationship of trust with consumers, which, in turn, helps alleviate any risk perception. All of these reduce marketing support requirements over time.

The second thing that a brand does is that it differentiates its owner from the competition. A strong brand helps set a company or product apart from the competition. With advances in the technology of production, differentiating between the intrinsic nature of rival products is becoming increasingly difficult due to a reduction in attention spans and the plethora of brands clamoring for our attention.

Brands are no longer competing on a local stage; they now compete in the global economy. And how does a firm stand out from the thousands or millions of similar organizations around the world? Through branding. The brain likes the dopamine spike that a ‘different’ brand provides.

Thirdly, a brand provides the vehicle’ to capture the customer’s preference. Whenever there is a conflict between item preference and brand preference, we are more likely to lean towards buying the item from the brand we like, the one that gives us more dopamine (or serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin or acetylcholine or a combination). The mere presence of a brand logo can result in a greatly biased decision. In a behavioral science study, it was found that individuals processed brand information even before they started the decision-making process. Anatomically speaking, this was probably because neurons in the ventromedial prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices of those individuals’ brains responded to the brand information. Yes, that’s right: certain parts of our brain are wired to understand our preferred choices and they often end up influencing what turn out to be ‘biased’ decisions. Therefore, the brand makes a key difference when it comes to product differentiation. For many product categories, it is the crux of product differentiation. This is why companies strive to promote strong affective associations with their brand among customers to develop and maintain a competitive advantage.

Source : Brands and the Brain: How to Use Neuroscience to Create Impactful Brands by Arvind Sahay

Good Reads : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60693959-brands-and-the-brain

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