Unlocking Consumer Desires: Cutting-Edge Subconscious Research

In the late 19th century, figures like Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung championed the vital importance of the unconscious. Together, they built the foundation of psychology while attempting to bring relief to a neurotic Western European suffering under the mechanic weight of runaway industrialization. Then, the behaviorist model took over psychology in the 20th century, and the marginalized human unconscious was eventually renamed the subconscious.

This doesn’t mean addressing the subconscious was sidelined. Marketers and propagandists aimed their message beyond the consciousness of individuals with effective success. Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, hooked a generation of women to smoking by associating cigarettes with phallic symbols of freedom. In the same era, Eric Dichter exploited male virility energies by claiming there was a tiger in the tank when any man put Exxon gas in their car. Qualitative market research was born and developed, and a lot of money was made by those speaking to the human subconscious.

This dynamic hasn’t changed today. Marketers know that the color yellow depicts cost savings to consumers, while certain types of music in a store increase the chance for sales. The subconscious is the best-kept secret in marketing organizations. There are many studies on how we are primarily driven by our subconscious, with data indicating that the subconscious makes a dizzying 95 percent of buying decisions. Other research reveals that with fMRI brain scans, scientists can predict participants’ decisions as many as seven seconds before making a conscious decision.

Those qualitative and psychologically driven marketers will continue to mine the human subconscious for behavioral gold. But in these technologically advanced days, shouldn’t some tools be adopted for the hidden desires of respondents?

There are, and let’s look at a few emerging, cutting-edge ones.

Eye-tracking

The eyes are the window to the soul; with this tech, one can travel into a person’s soul. In essence, eye-tracking monitors how the eye fixates and wanders, revealing how individuals genuinely react to what is seen. Deeper shopping habits and underlying emotions can be decoded, allowing researchers to unmask deep desires skillfully. The tech can be utilized on a screen or in the real world when attention is placed on certain visual elements, how long each fixation lasts, and how these elements are fixated upon. 

Real-life use

To identify points of interest and pinpoint sources of information in a virtual retail environment, whether a person is at a grocery store or clothing boutique.

Facial coding

Facial expressions talk about as much as our mouths. Facial coding captures these subtle messages, even if they’re trying to hide specific details. In short, it translates facial expressions into quantifiable judgments. After all, the facial nerve connects most facial muscles with the brain. Researchers can dig below high-level expressions that most accept at (pardon the pun) face value. What’s great is that it can provide a numerical readout on reactions, which can be particularly helpful in assessing how a product performs versus the competitors’. 

Real-life use

Facial recognition is already used by companies like Facebook and Google, and the data is stored to understand their consumers’ reactions and behavior. Companies could utilize it to find the initial response to a product’s packaging (the idea of getting one chance for a good first impression comes to mind). 

Response latency

This psychological concept measures the time it takes for an individual to respond to a stimulus – measured by tools like surveys, reaction time tests, and biometric trackers. Tracking response latency provides insights into psychological and behavioral processes like recall, preference, comprehension, and choice. Response latency is also a valuable apparatus for measuring implicit biases if a subject is not being honest or just “going with the flow” with the rest of the study group. 

Real-life use

A company might use response latency to measure how long customers respond to a new product or service, potentially helping the brand tailor its marketing messages to optimize decision-making. 

Implicit Association Tests (IATs)

This powerful solution measures the speed and accuracy of the sorting process to determine the strength of the association between the concepts and evaluations or stereotypes. IATs can be employed to reveal automatic associations that people hold between concepts and attributes. The test was originally conceived to overcome biases from directly asking someone about their inherent prejudices or automatic preferences. 

Real-life use

A company that sells organic food products might use the IAT to measure consumers’ implied attitudes toward organic food. The test could expose whether consumers have positive or negative associations with organic food, even if they consciously respond differently due to marketing or social norms. 

Projective techniques

This is actually a set of psychological tools that help gain awareness of the involuntary reasoning and feelings behind consumer behavior. Projective techniques allow respondents to project their authentic opinions and beliefs onto other people or even objects. The respondent’s true feelings are inferred from what they say about others. They are typically employed during individual or small group interviews – and incorporate varied research methods: associative, metaphorical, completion, and construction methods. These take the shape of tools like word association tests, sentence completion tests, or picture response tests. 

Real-life use

Before a study, participants could be asked to bring an item they associate with the brand. They would be asked to creatively describe the item and how it relates to the company. This procedure would allow marketers to understand people’s emotional attachment to a brand. There are more of these subconscious-mining tools, including EEG/Neuroscience and subliminal stimuli. None of these are deemed truly mainstream but should be considered by researchers attempting to gain profound qualitative data. Remember that it took the internet years to become mainstream, and AI is still not wholly mainstream, even if it benefits organizations and content creators today. 

If you think the subconscious should be ignored for quantitative approaches or just relegated to traditional qualitative research, think about a time a disturbing thought entered your head at night when you just wanted to get some sleep or you were wondering why you walked out of a store with far more items than you wanted. Like a tiger in a gas tank, the subconscious is powerful, so it should be treated with powerful tools.