Neuromarketing How does it help you take your research further?

Neuromarketing is becoming increasingly important in market research and UX research. With it you can make more objective measurements of the emotions and behaviour of consumers and users to optimise your campaigns, your packaging, your shops, your digital environments and much more.

Using neuromarketing techniques in 2025 is much easier and more efficient thanks to technology. Today we take a look at the most common applications of neuromarketing in research to whet your appetite before the launch of new solutions on the We are testers platform.

What is neuromarketing?

Neuromarketing is a discipline that combines insights from neuroscience and marketing to better understand how people respond to the stimuli they are exposed to. Its main application in market research is to predict consumers’ reactions to certain stimuli, such as advertisements, products, packaging, images or sounds, by taking biometric measurements with the help of technology.

To better understand how neuromarketing works in practice, let’s look at an example. Today we know that emotion is a key factor in advertising effectiveness, to give an example. If an advertisement causes us to feel an intense emotion, it is easier for us to remember it and for it to generate brand recall and positive associations that influence future purchasing decisions. And when we feel emotions, it shows in our non-verbal communication. To be ‘wide-eyed’ means surprise, and a ‘roll of the eyes’ implies an emotion of disdain towards something. If people react visibly when we feel emotion, a very good way to understand our reaction is to survey our facial gestures.

Another example of the use of neuromarketing in research is eye-tracking, which is often used to understand which parts of an advertisement, website or shop attract the most attention. There are more examples, such as the use of electroencephalograms, or MRI scans to see which parts of the brain are stimulated when people are subjected to stimuli, but these are more infrequent. Facial coding and eye tracking are by far the most widespread techniques among businesses.

Neuromarketing applications in market research and UX research

Neuromarketing has many applications in market research and UX research:

• Product testing. It is used to create more attractive products based on unconscious preferences.
• Advertising testing. It allows to identify if the advertisements generate the desired emotion (joy, nostalgia, enthusiasm…). The best executions can then be chosen and creative elements such as music, narratives or colours can be adjusted to maximise impact.
• Pack testing. It allows you to test different packaging designs to determine which one attracts more attention and is perceived as more attractive. It also allows the choice of colours, shapes and sizes that appeal most to consumers.
• Customer experience testing. Neuromarketing allows the survey of how consumers react in a shop and improve the layout, lighting or music to enhance the experience.
• User experience tests. As in a physical shop, neuromarketing can be used in online shops to better understand how the user progresses towards conversion and apply measures to improve conversion rates.

The great advantage of neuromarketing is that it allows us to collect unconscious reactions. If after seeing an advert we are asked if we felt emotion and if that emotion was one of joy or surprise, it will be difficult for us to answer. The fact is that responses to stimuli are often unconscious and it is difficult for people to capture and express them objectively. This conscious reflection is no longer necessary with neuromarketing, as the spontaneous unconscious reaction can be measured and compared with the base of similar reactions in order to code it. As a result, the results will be more objective and accurate.

Eye-tracking

One of the most widely used neuromarketing techniques in research is eye-tracking. This technique records and analyses a person’s eye movements to understand how they interact visually with a visual stimulus, be it an advertisement, a website, a product or any other. This analysis reveals which elements attract the most attention, how long each area is viewed, and in what order the different elements in view are visually explored.

Eye tracking can use specialised devices, such as glasses with sensors, which measure eye movements and pupil dilation. When testing is done over the internet, these tools are generally not necessary, as most devices have a camera that can be used to capture eye movements.

Eye-tracking identifies two key components. On the one hand, fixations, which are the moments when the gaze pauses to process a specific area. They indicate interest and attention. On the other hand, saccadic movements, those quick movements between fixations that take place when the user is searching or exploring something.

The data obtained by eye-tracking is often represented by heat maps – which show the most observed areas with colours, or by visual trajectories, which represent the order and path of eye movements.

Eye-tracking has been used for years in UX research. It is used to assess whether users can easily find buttons, menus or important information in order to improve the usability of websites and apps. In market research, its most common application is in the evaluation of advertisements, packaging and in the optimisation of physical and digital shelves. Thanks to eye-tracking, it is possible to follow the path of the eyes when they explore an advertisement or packaging to verify whether the consumer notices the desired elements. The same applies to physical shop shelves, which are generally digitised, where eye-tracking follows the path of the eyes until the consumer finds the product he or she is looking for.

Facial coding analysis

Facial coding analyses facial expressions to identify basic and universal human emotions. It is based on the theory of emotions developed by Paul Ekman, who identified that certain facial muscles are activated by specific emotions. And this occurs to a greater or lesser extent in all cultures, so they are inherent to human beings, regardless of the culture to which they belong.

Paul Ekman’s list of the seven universal emotions includes:

In addition to these basic emotions, facial expressions can also reflect more complex emotions, which are combinations of the basic ones, such as anxiety or embarrassment. However, in research, the short list of seven core emotions is most commonly used to avoid scattering measurements across a wider set of options.

Facial coding is often used in more advanced pre-testing models of advertising to understand the extent to which an ad generates an emotional response, to what degree and on what type of emotion. With neuromarketing, the impact of the evaluated ad can be measured and compared against a database of previously surveyed ads to anticipate its effectiveness.

Neuromarketing with We are testers

At We are testers we are working to be able to offer you neuromarketing tools on our research platform very soon. We will tell you more about this soon, but if you want to start evaluating some kind of survey, do not hesitate to contact your usual person at We are testers to inform you when it will be available.