Measuring the Effectiveness of Mellat Bank and Ma Insurance Joint Printed Advertising Using Neuromarketing

Marketing activists are always looking for answers to the questions such as "what can attract the consumers?" and "how can consumers’ attention be focused to vital products and information?". Among a variety of research methods, self-reporting method is considered as the optimal method to answer these questions and evaluate marketing practices, especially in advertising. However, the influence of neuroscience in the humanities has revealed the weaknesses of these methods, so that a new paradigm is emerging which is referred to as neuromarketing. The purpose of this study is to use the insights obtained from neurosciences and particularly neuromarketing to measure the effectiveness of joint printed advertising of Mellat Bank and Ma insurance company.

This research is quantitative and applied in nature which is conducted in a quasi-experimental manner. Eye tracking method was used to collect the data in this study. The statistical population of this study includes the customers and audiences of the advertisement; 15 testes, who belong to the age group of 25 to 50 years, were randomly selected to participate in this study. Study data were analyzed using visual analysis and inferential statistical analysis through one-sample t-test and non-parametric Friedman test. In this study, items such as thermal map, blur map, eye movement and glare map, number of fixations, average duration of first fixation, and average duration of fixation were analyzed.

The results of the measurement of advertisements showed that the elements in the advertisements had efficiently attracted visual attention and the printed advertisements were well memorable. However, there was no significant difference between printed advertising designs in terms of attraction and memorability.

Contrary to the traditional assumptions, consumers are not rational and the majority of the brain activities and processes are performed outside of our conscious consciousness over which we have no control. These activities and processes are not accessible through self-reporting methods and identifying the stimuli that affect brain activity requires the use of new perspectives and methods based on neurosciences. A number of marketing researchers and corporate executives tend to answer sensitive questions about consumers’ behavior based on a neuromarketing approach due to the weaknesses of self-reporting methods such as the inability to describe emotions and feelings, limitations regarding cultural and linguistic differences, acceptance and social acceptance errors, misconceptions about human rationality, and memory limitations. Neuromarketing is considered as an approach to highlight the hidden stimuli of consumers’ behavior that were not previously recognizable by conventional research methods. The eye tracking method has the ability to answer the questions which were difficult to answer by traditional self-reporting methods. Eye tracking meythod can help respond to the following questions: “which elements are seen in the ads?”, “which elements are seen the most?”, “what is the order of noticing the elements in the ads?”, “which elements in advertising cause the most processing and mental conflicts?”, and “which ads result in better performance?”.