Our Mission
The role of emotions in decision-making processes.
If we opened any marketing or communication manual, we could observe an accurate description of all the steps consumers go through. From the search for information to the evaluation of the information received up to the moment of choice. All described according to a linear process and without any particular intervening variables. Within this perspective, the consumer is seen as a mainly rational being, always able to accurately assess the information available and most useful to make the best possible choice. As comfortable and reassuring as it is to elaborate 'infallible' marketing and communication plans, this perspective is the result of a backward and distorted vision of the real capabilities of the human mind and the real motivations underlying our choices. The most recent neuroscientific research and the contribution of psychologists and economists have finally tried to overturn this perspective, offering a new way of looking at the consumer.
We are not entirely rational beings, and we do not have at all the cognitive resources to continually process and evaluate the world around us. Instead, we are energy savers. We often use cognitive shortcuts, partial elaborations and superficial evaluations all guided by unconscious and non-rational processes.
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The revolutionary paradigm shift of recent decades confirms how emotions are the real drivers of our behaviour. It is the delicate and often unknown emotional universe that leads us through our choices, even the most complex ones. Often producing unpredictable behaviours and unforeseeable consequences at the behavioural level.
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Within this new perspective Neuromarketing and Consumer Neuroscience are born: the application of neuroscientific techniques to study and analyze the emotional, irrational and unconscious universe underlying our consumer behaviour. The aim is to provide companies with a new and revolutionary tool for the analysis of their consumers, stopping asking them what they like about the new packaging or the new advertising campaign, but only starting to discover and understand it.
Our History
The Behavior and Brain Lab was founded in 2010 at the prestigious IULM University in Milan. Initially born as a centre for behavioural research (behavioural analysis) and bio-feedback, it has gradually integrated the most advanced techniques of neurophysiological analysis. Today it represents, together with La Sapienza University in Rome, one of the most prestigious centres for marketing applied neuroscience analysis in Italy.
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The research Centre aims to measure the emotions, perceptions and overall consumer experience. The plus of our methodology goes beyond simple business consulting. What we do is to bring together the skills of a multidisciplinary team to understand and analyze in a scientific way what happens in the minds of consumers in the presence of any type of communication stimulus. To do this, in addition to a great passion for the world of marketing and the skills of our researchers, we combine a love of research that allows us to produce a product of great quality and reliability.
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Click here to visit our lab webpage on IULM webpage.
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Myths to debunk
Anyone who approaches this discipline often encounters a range of information that can create distorted opinions and erroneous conclusions on the subject. It is, therefore, necessary to point out that:
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Neuromarketing is not manipulation. The discipline aims to objectively measure what happens during the experiences of consumption and communication to understand how, possibly, to improve the fluidity and effectiveness of the relationship between business and consumer.
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Neuromarketing studies cannot be carried out by just anyone. Neuromarketing techniques produce very complex and often delicate neurophysiological data in the output. The competence, professionalism and interdisciplinarity of the research team are fundamental requirements to have reliable data and not to conduct approximate research that can only damage the reputation of the discipline.
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Neuromarketing research data is not an opinion. Unlike traditional investigation techniques, our research outputs are objective and not influenced by subjective elements. Although the underlying motivations for some behaviours are difficult to interpret, the data from the instrumentation are the result of involuntary and objectively measurable neurophysiological activations
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Neuromarketing is not the new Bible of communication. The innovative approach provides a huge plus for analysis with classic investigation techniques. This perspective should be seen more in terms of integrative rather than substitutive. For this reason, all our research is conducted according to protocols involving qualitative (derived from traditional methodologies) and Neuromarketing surveys. This allows, moreover, the opportunity to compare the data emerging from scientific measurements with those deriving from the declared, with often surprising results.