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Neuromarketing Eye Tracking Helps Campbell’s Soup Get a Makeover

Posted on Mar 9, 2010 | 0 comments

Neuromarketing Eye Tracking Helps Campbell’s Soup Get a Makeover After decades of producing America’s favorite soup, Campbell’s Soup Co. is ready for a makeover. Although the condensed soups generate more than $1 billion in sales, Campbell’s is investigating ways to generate a 2% increase in sales without raising prices. How is it going to do accomplish this? The Wall Street Journal published an article covering Campbell’s’ strategy to revamp its product labeling by conducting research using neuromarketing, a relatively new approach to market research which evaluates consumers’ physiological responses to marketing and advertising stimuli. Neuromarketing studies incorporate multiple biometrics, such as heart rate, skin moisture, and breathing speed, and can be used to explore unconscious reactions during the shopping experience. Eye tracking technology is also being incorporated into these studies, as certain oculometrics like gaze direction, fixation duration, and pupil size have correlations with mental focus, cognitive processes, and emotional reactions to visual information.

Campbell’s began its neuromarketing studies two years ago after finding that advertisements which rated well using a conventional survey or interview method had little positive effect on sales. The company decided to employ neuromarketing in combination with a deeper interviewing process in order to receive conscious and unconscious feedback on consumer preferences, decision making, and emotional responses to soup can labels and in-store aisle displays. Innerscope Research Inc., a Boston, MA, based company with a biometric monitoring and reporting system, was hired to help conduct research. An in-home and an in-store test were conducted on 40 people. The subjects wore vests that recorded posture, heart rate, perspiration, and breathing rate and depth; an eye-tracking monitor was also used to record eye movements and pupil width. Once the data was collected, the marketing team analyzed the results to formulate a plan for refreshing the product line’s look.

What Campbell’s found was that most participants were overwhelmed by the massive red and white wall of soups and spent little time engaging with the product; rather they would quickly scan the section and select soups while exhibiting little biometric response. Those who took time to look at the varieties had a greater biometrically evident emotional response and ended up putting more cans in their baskets.

So, to evoke emotional engagement, Campbell will be adding steam to a better-detailed soup image contained in a more modern-looking white bowl as people indicated that warm soup was more appealing. It will also be removing the silver spoon containing a scoop of the soup because participants reported it had little effect on their emotional response. Eye tracking results showed that the large, red logo at the top of the can was overpowering and distracted the consumer’s attention from the important, distinguishing elements of the label, like the variety name and picture, making all of the labels look too much alike. To resolve this, the Campbell logo will be minimized and relocated to the bottom of the can, and the varieties will be divided into four color-coded categories to facilitate the search process.

Neuromarketing is becoming a more commonly used research technique not only because biometric monitoring technologies, like eye-tracking, are becoming more advanced, cheaper, and more accessible, but also because research scientists in this field are better able to translate biometric data into meaningful, constructive conclusions that enable a company to modify its product marketing strategy.

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Neuromarketing Eye Tracking Helps Campbell’s Soup Get a Makeover

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