How To Incorporate EMOTIV’s Performance Metrics Into Your Consumer Research

Consumer research has undergone significant changes in the past few years. Researchers no longer rely on qualitative research methods to understand consumers’ preferences and behaviors. They’re now incorporating more effective, brain data-driven methods into their research. Researchers can measure more meaningful insights directly from consumers’ brains, and the results are having a tremendous impact on consumer engagement and the bottom line.

EMOTIV has been at the forefront of measuring brain activity for more than a decade with its wireless Electroencephalography (EEG) headsets. The raw EEG or brain activity data measured by these headsets can be difficult to interpret without the right expertise. But EMOTIV has pioneered a way to decode these signals, and it’s proving to be a valuable tool in objectively understanding consumer preferences and emotions.

EMOTIV’s Performance Metrics (PM) provide real-time objective data from the brain that consumer researchers are leveraging to learn how advertising or product features trigger different emotional responses in the brain.

This guide will help you discover how to harness PM in your consumer research, providing objective consumer data that’s driving effective consumer engagement and improving business performance.

What Performance Metrics Does EMOTIV Measure?

EMOTIV’s EEG headsets capture the following PM from the brain:

How are Performance Metrics Enhancing Consumer Research?

PM provide a real-time window into participants’ subconscious reactions to stimuli. Many consumer researchers are incorporating PM into their research to uncover subconscious drivers and gain a deeper understanding of consumer behavior and decision-making processes directly from participants’ brains without biases.

Thanks to the portability of EMOTIV’s EEG headsets, consumer researchers can collect contextual PM data from their research participants. This contextual data shows how influences, such as the time of day, location, and social settings, influence consumer behavior. With this information, advertisers to create impactful advertising campaigns tailored to different environments.

Here are a few things to think about when incorporating Performance Metrics into your consumer research:

1. Define What You Want to Quantify in Your Research

The first step is clearly defining what you want to quantify in your research. For example, say you want to quantify the level of engagement experienced by participants viewing a series of adverts. You may also want to understand how engagement affects emotional responses, such as boredom or interest, and the cognitive changes experienced by participants’ capacity to absorb the information. So, you would need to ask some key questions:

1. Which adverts are more engaging?
2. Do participants pay more attention in private spaces?
3. Do more engaging adverts mean a customer is more likely to purchase?

2. Choose an EEG Headset

Before you begin your experiment, you need to choose the right EEG headset. EMOTIV has developed a range of EEG headsets, from 2 – 32 channels: MN8, INSIGHT, EPOC X, and FLEX. To help you consider the right EEG headset for your research, we recommended reading How to Choose the Right EMOTIV EEG Headset for Your Research, which walks you through our headsets’ features and capabilities. The EMOTIV Headset Comparison is also another great resource that can help you with your decision.

3. Build Your Experiment

Once you’ve defined your objectives and have chosen a headset, you’re ready to build your experiment. PRO includes an integrated experiment builder that allows you to create brain research experiments from scratch without any coding. We recommend starting the experiment with an eyes open, eyes closed session to obtain a baseline measurement of the participant’s brain activity. You can also include a questionnaire to establish if anything might affect their PM data measurements on the day. You can incorporate as many calibration, instructional, and stimuli phases as you want into your experiment. Once you’ve finished building, you can publish your experiment for use in-house or remotely so subjects can participate from anywhere in the world.

4. Participant Recruitment

EMOTIV prides itself on democratizing EEG technology. We’ve created a range of research-grade wireless EEG headsets that are simple to set up without expertise, making it easier for participants to contribute their brain data to research projects from anywhere in the world. If you choose, you can conduct your research with participants remotely via a private link to their email so they can participate at home. Alternatively, you can invite your participants to your lab so they can participate in person.

5: Participants Complete Your Experiment

Your experiment can be conducted with multiple participants in parallel individual or group studies. Before starting, participants fit their EEG headset and check the EEG signal quality: the higher the EEG signal quality, the more reliable the data is. Once your participants complete the experiment, you can view the PM data in PRO.

6. Incorporate Qualitative Research Methods

Depending on your research goals, we recommend measuring participants’ brain activity in conjunction with other self-reported methods, such as survey questions. Doing this provides a complete and complementary understanding of their brain responses. Questions can be asked before and/or after you’ve conducted your experiment to assess if participants recall a particular event (e.g., a particular advert) and discuss their preferences and attitudes toward your brand.

7. Analyze the Results

Once your study is complete, you can analyze the PM data collected to see how participants ‘truly’ react to products or advertising. With these results, you can make effective decisions that improve creative advertising, packing design, product design, brand experience, and marketing strategies.

Performance Metrics: An Accurate Window Into Consumer Behavior

Unconscious processes drive a large part of consumer behavior. As proved by Aki’s research, EMOTIV’s PM provide a window into consumers’ preferences and emotions that cannot be accurately measured using qualitative research methods alone. Our PM provide efficient and accurate insights into why consumers behave the way they do in any context. Armed with this data, you can increase engagement with your brand and ultimately improve your ROI.

Want to Incorporate Performance Metrics into Your Consumer Research?

If you’re new to EEG technology or want to learn more about the benefits of incorporating PM into your consumer research, then EMOTIV’s Enterprise & Research Service can help you achieve your goals.