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5/25/2020

5 good reasons to apply for the Master in Neuromarketing Consultancy

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5 good reasons to apply for the Master in Neuromarketing Consultancy

by Davide Rigoni

Founder of ICense and Professor of Neuromarketing at Hult International Business School

In this blog post I outline 5 very good reasons for applying for the Master in Neuromarketing Consultancy, organized by ICense in collaboration with the Belgian-Italian Chamber of Commerce (Brussels) and the Centro Universitario Internazionale (Milano).

​#1: This master prepares you for the actual business world

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Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels
​As reported a few years ago by McKinsey & Co, almost 60% of worldwide employers believe that academic education does not adequately prepare for the work environment.

In other words, more than half of the employers feel that individuals who completed an academic educational program lack the skills and the know-how to operate effectively in companies and organizations.

We agree that explaining theories and delivering knowledge is not enough and therefore the program of the Master in Neuromarketing Consultancy is designed and carried out with a learn-by-doing vision.

Our objective is to provide a continuous learning environment that will deliver the know-how to successfully apply psychology and neuroscience to the marketing mix.

This is way the teaching staff includes both academic and business professionals who won’t just guide you through the most recent discoveries in consumer neuroscience, but who will also challenge you with practical assignments on real neuromarketing cases and let you experience first-hand the neuromarketing toolbox (eye-tracking, emotion readers, wearable sensors, ...).

​Learning and professional enrichment will be inevitable!

#2: A great opportunity for networking with professional neuromarketers

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Photo by fauxels from Pexels
​“Networking is the No. 1 unwritten rule of success in business.”
Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and co-founder of Ellevest.
Everybody is well acquainted with the notion that a successful career does not come from social and professional isolation. 

One important mission of the Master in Neuromarketing Consultancy is to stimulate networking opportunities among the participants (and the speakers) and to create a community of neuromarketing professionals.

Most of the assignments and case studies are carried out collectively in small groups and are designed to encourage active collaborations among the participants.

From our experience during the past editions of the master, this arrangement offers a great opportunity to get involved with other marketing and management practitioners and build valuable and long-term professional relationships.

On top of that, post-session drinks and a social dinner at the end of the master are proposed to encourage and enable the networking process in a more informal manner!

#3: A focus on individual business project

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Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels
We think the best way to learn anything is by…doing it!

An important element of the Master in Neuromarketing Consultancy is the development of one’s own business project.

From day 1, you will be encouraged to reflect about how neuromarketing can be beneficial for your business and we will help you evaluating and fine-tuning your own ideas.

Through the guidance of the teaching staff, you will explore the different ways neuromarketing can be applied to your own professional domain - e.g. optimizing the pricing strategies of a product or a service, improving the UX of a website, testing the impact of an advertisement, understanding how customers actually feel, designing a brain-proof marketing communication, ...

This will be a unique opportunity to start implementing neuromarketing to your own business under the supervision of neuromarketing experts.

#4: Neuromarketing and traditional marketing: an integrated approach

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Photo by Lukas from Pexels
Neuromarketing is too often presented in contrast to traditional marketing and market research.

We actually think that neuromarketing and traditional marketing complements each other.

While neuromarketing methods can, in specific situations, offer invaluable consumer insights that traditional tools cannot provide – because of different reasons such as social desirability biases, strategic answering and people’s inability to report on unconscious processes – we are also convinced that neuromarketing can (and should) be combined with other approaches.

In the case studies we present during the Master in Neuromarketing Consultancy, you will learn how neuromarketing concepts and techniques can complement marketing surveys, qualitative interviews, and focus groups.

We strongly believe that integrating the different methods make your analysis more accurate and ultimately will improve your marketing strategy.

For an interesting view on the increased predictive accuracy of combining the different methods, click here
.

#5: Tailored to your specific needs

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Photo by Lukas from Pexels
The program of the master is designed to deliver the most useful and concrete learning experience for each applicant participant.

This is one of the reasons why the number of participants is limited!

While the core of the learning program remains loyal to our 
vision, each edition of the master is adjusted to your specific needs.

This means that the guest speakers, the specific topics of the lectures and the content of the assignments are tailored to the audience.

This is definitely extra work for us – copy-paste is way easier and faster! – but we are committed to ensure that the participants to the master will learn something that they really need.

Still not convinced?

​​If these 5 reasons did not convince you, then maybe these testimonials will 😊

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High quality of the training, very innovative, very actionable insights and practical workshops, excellent "reading" of the class (use of recap sessions, ability to adjust language and slides to the specific expertise of the attendees...).
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Eleonora Dusi

Sales Manager & Business Development
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Coaster

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​It was an important learning experience, which enriched my expertise both at the theoretical and at the practical level. A lot of attention has been given to our own personal projects, which we designed and developed together with the teaching staff.
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Valentina Errani

Trade Marketing Specialist
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Whirlpool EMEA

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​A direct and hands-on experience with the neuromarketing toolbox! Great understanding of the scientific background of neuromarketing and its wide applications. Also a great networking opportunity!
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Luca Cavalieri

Psychologist
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Self-Employed

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​The quality of the teaching is extremely high, and the master gave me new professional opportunities. I also liked the great atmosphere!
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Lorenzo Tigani

Facebook Advertiser & Financia Advisor
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Self-Employed

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For info about the master, click here or contact us at info@icense.org

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3/20/2020

covid and cognitive biases

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covid and cognitive biases

Davide Rigoni

Founder of ICense and Professor of Neuromarketing at Hult International Business School

PicturePhoto by San Fermin Pamplona from Pexels
The COVID-19 pandemic is a worldwide phenomenon and it is on top of the news across the globe. Among the many aspects that could be discussed about this tragic period, there is one that should attract the attention of psychologists, neuroscientists, economists and marketeers.

​This crisis is providing real-time insights on irrational human behavior.

Since Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel prize in 2002 for his influential studies on behavioral economics, it became clear that humans are deeply irrational beings. Although being irrational is arguably a good thing more often than not, as it allows us to make quick decisions even when very little information is available, strong emotions, such as fear, can have a negative impact on our decision making and strongly bias our behavior. 
​
Researchers from different fields have identified hundreds of psychological biases - i.e. systematic errors in human decision making and judgement - that cause people to behave irrationally. Some of these biases can help us understand the absurd behavior we have been observing these last weeks.

What are the psychological biases that are driving people's behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic?

In the initial phases of the pandemic, despite the worrying news arriving from the city of Wuhan in China and the shocking images of crowded hospitals and entire cities being isolated, the government and the citizens in EU countries were greatly underestimating the impact of the virus.

In Italy, the first EU country experiencing the tragic consequences of the Covid-19 contagion, government officials urged the population to go out at night for the classic "aperitivo" in the streets of Milan, one of the cities in Europe that is currently counting the highest number of people who contracted the virus.

In France, despite the warnings arriving from China and Italy, Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte went to theater to incite the French population to get out of their homes despite the contagion outbreak. Even if these choices could be driven in part by political reasons, they also testify of what psychologists and economists refer to as the optimism bias.

The optimism bias
is essentially the wrong belief that that chances that we experience something tragic is lower than our peers. In other words, it is the wrong belief that "it cannot happen to me, I am special!".

The optimism bias can lead to very poor
decision-making, which can in turn have disastrous results for our lives.

The optimism bias is not biasing our choices only in times of crisis such as the ones we are all experiencing now. We actually display this bias almost everyday; when we do not wear the seatbelt in the car, when we do not put on sunscreen or when we decide to smoke a cigarette. All these behaviors are accompanied by the belief that after all we are less likely to get in an accident, get skin or lung cancer.

However, what makes this bias particularly dangerous during Covid-19 pandemic is that while in normal conditions such risky behavior affects only ourselves, here we are putting at risk the life of hundreds if not thousands of other people. The belief that "I won't get skin cancer if I don't use sunscreen" is dangerous for myself and maybe for my family members. The belief that "I won't get infected by the virus" or "I won't experience the severe symptoms of the viral infection" can have harmful consequences for all the people I meet in the streets, at work, in the public transports or even at home.

Connected to the optimism bias is also the widespread belief that the virus only affects "old people", or people who are more than 60 years old. This is probably due to the higher number of reported cases among the old population as compared to the younger people, which generates a form of availability bias.

If people can quickly think about several examples of an event, they will believe that it is the most common. For instance, after seeing several news reporting about car thefts in your city, you will probably form
the belief that car theft is much more common than it really is in your city. In a similar vein, being exposed to the news reporting mainly cases among old people with a medical conditions, reinforces the conviction that the infection is only a problem for the old population.

The availability bias is usually helpful and important in 
decision making, because it allows us to reach fast decisions when information is scarce, but it can also lead us to underestimate the likelihood of other scenarios.

It should be noted that the probability of severe symptoms and death is indeed higher among older people (especially those with underlying medical conditions). However, many variables about the pandemic are still unknown.

For instance, the estimates about the mortality rate among the young population are not definitive and they do not take into account the situation in which people cannot receive adequate medical treatment - a possible scenario if the number of infected patients surpasses the healthcare system capacity. In addition, it is not clear whether the virus can mutate into more or less aggressive strains.

In other words, even if the virus is more dangerous for the old population, we should not underestimate the possible consequences for the younger population, especially when epidemiological data are still limited.


Awareness about these potentially dangerous psychological biases may stop us from engaging in risky behavior and reduce our chances of getting infected (and infect others) by COVID-19.


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3/9/2020

neuroscience and media research

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neuroscience and media research

by Davide Rigoni

Founder of ICense and Professor of Neuromarketing at Hult International Business School 

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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
In a study conducted by the Medialaan's Muzieklaboratorium in collaboration with market research agency Profacts, the implicit neurophysiological responses to the top 10 songs of the radio broadcast Joe FM were measured on a number of VIPs from the Flemish media industry.

The goal of the research was to identify the "goosebumps" factor and predict the ranking of the songs and their entry into the Top 10.

Four different parameters were measured while people were listening to different songs, all based on implicit and neurophysiological activity. A compound "neuro-score" was then obtained. 

This score would therefore be used to build a "neuro-ranking" of people's preference for the different songs, which would then be compared to the actual ranking based on consumer's behavior (e.g. the most listened or requested songs by the listeners of Joe FM).

​While the study was conducted on a too small sample to obtain valuable statistical insights about the accuracy of the method, it shows how neuroscience methods can be used in media research.

Indeed, this study is a proof of concept that can inspire neuromarketeers about how it is possible to use the neuromarketing toolbox to extrapolate information about consumers' implicit preferences.

In the short video below (in Dutch), people who were tested and interviewed share their experience on the note of Queen's song Bohemian Rapsody.

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    Davide Rigoni, Founder of ICense, Professor of Neuromarketing, Hult International Business School, London UK.

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