REJUVENATING THE MARKETING MIX THROUGH NEUROMARKETING TO CULTIVATE THE GREEN CONSUMER

Abstract

In the 21st century, the growth of environmentally friendly products caught attention primarily from both consumers and companies. One of the most interesting trends is consumers’ growing environmental conscience and social impacts of the products they buy. The preference for green products is clearly increasing. Consumers want to act green, but they expect businesses to lead the way. However, many companies experienced problems to understand the consumers’ decision-making process. Consumers are equally confused when they do not quite understand how to act on their greener impulses. Many attempts to label green products are meaningless at best and mystifying at worst. In other words, companies must move customers through the entire purchasing process—from being aware of eco-friendly products to consider their pros and cons, to paying for the products. Due to this issue, a significant advancement of neuroscience has resulted in the emergence of neuromarketing, which provides a better understanding of how subconscious minds react in everyday situations, especially in marketing activities. This new concept brings powerful insights and techniques into marketing research, especially on consumers’ behaviour analysis. In this view, this study looks at the growing field of neuromarketing and aims to explore consumers’ subconscious minds by examining the effectiveness of the marketing mix on consumers’ decision-making process. This study employed Event-related Potential (ERP) and Eye Tracking (ET) to examine consumers’ subconscious minds towards the main component of the marketing mix during the decision-making process. A laboratory experiment employed twenty-two volunteers to take part in the study. The results revealed that price and promotion elements are the key attributes which consumers consider in purchasing a green product. Thus, neuromarketing can reconfigure and improve conventional theories of marketing. This evidence offers a new marketing opportunity for marketers to improvise their marketing strategy and thus, increase their sales growth.