ActFuture has real expertise in cognitive research, both in France and abroad, in preparing clinical medical studies and international social media surveys for Facebook or Instagram.
What exactly is the definition of cognitive?
1: which concerns, is or involves conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning or memory). 2: based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge.
What do cognitive research methods have to offer?
Cognitive research methods offer a particularly useful approach to understanding the nature of culture (and therefore society) and how it works. But this usefulness will depend on significant improvements to both our empirical knowledge of cultural patterns and our ability to represent this knowledge formally. Agent-based computer models seem to offer a very promising method of achieving these goals. Our understanding of how cultural systems evolve and adapt will benefit from a more in-depth study of the interplay of individual cognitive properties (including abilities, constraints, mode of operation, etc.).
Knowing more about how people think and process information helps researchers better understand how the human brain works. It also enables psychologists to develop new ways of helping people cope with psychological difficulties.
What is the spectrum of intervention for cognitive research?
Although the list of related disciplines is constantly evolving, traditional cognitive science disciplines include anthropology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology.
The cognitive approach uses laboratory experiments that are highly controlled and therefore reproducible. However, it measures unobservable behaviors, so it’s arguably not as scientific as the behaviorist approach.
What’s the difference between psychology and cognitive science?
Psychology is the study of thought, while cognitive science is interdisciplinary research into the mind and intelligence, which also includes philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics and anthropology.
What’s the difference between cognitive science and neuroscience?
Neuroscience explores the brain from a biological, neural and chemical perspective, while cognitive science studies memory, language, reasoning, attention and learning – mental processes.
What are the 8 basic cognitive abilities?
– Sustained attention.
– Response inhibition.
– Information processing speed.
– Cognitive flexibility.
– Multiple and simultaneous attention.
– Working memory.
– Category formation.
– Shape recognition.
Cognitive theory in market research reveals what consumers are thinking during the process when they search for a product across many channels and prepare to buy it.
What is cognitive theory in market research?
Applying cognitive theory to qualitative research can enable research participants to provide answers that are deeper and more relevant than simple survey questions. While direct questions often result in superficial yes/no answers, applying cognitive theory to qualitative research can generate a more natural conversation with consumers.
Qualitative research can be adapted to many fields, including consumer purchasing behavior. It’s a natural solution for marketers and advertisers who want to understand what drives consumers to buy a brand or product. Marketers with a deep understanding of consumer motivations and experiences can develop advertising campaigns and products that meet consumers’ real needs by solving their problems.
How cognitive theory works in market research
Consumers go through a number of steps before making a purchase. Buyers are said to pass through a marketing funnel, which represents the commitment to make a purchase.
It’s easy to focus on the movement of consumers through this funnel without really understanding what drives this movement from one stage to the next.
Two fundamental theories for a cognitive approach are the theory of perception and the theory of identity, and both are based on phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of people’s conscious experience of their environment. Phenomenology focuses on first-person experience.
In qualitative market research, phenomenology forms the basis of focus groups, consumer diaries and interviews. As part of a research project based on phenomenological philosophy, participants report on and, in so doing, pass on information that only they possess.
Types of cognitive theory in market research
The theory of perception is inspired by phenomenology and neuroscience. Perceptual theorists are interested in how the world is perceived and conceptually organized by the human brain. When market researchers use perception theory as the basis for their surveys, they can ask study participants to reflect and communicate on the natural stages of information processing. These stages are attention, repetition, retrieval and encoding.
Standard survey-based market research doesn’t always tap into consumers’ often unconscious thoughts and emotions. But they may be able to delve deeper into their unconscious thinking if asked more open-ended questions, such as “What did you first notice about the product?” or “What did you associate the product with?”.
Identity theory
Identity theory focuses on how people define themselves and their place in the environment. Identity theorists are interested in the choices, aspirations, concerns and needs of individuals. Identity theory has practical applications in the construction of consumer profiles, and forms the basis of market segmentation. People tend not to be very good at analyzing their behavior or revealing the reasons behind their motivation. This means that presenting research questions to participants within an identity framework tends to elicit more nuanced, honest and thoughtful responses.
How people process information
Our short-term memory can only store around seven bits of information at any given time. The human brain has to repeat information to keep it in short-term memory. When information has been sufficiently rehearsed, it is transferred to long-term memory, where it can be retrieved without continuous repetition.
Items of information that are not repeated continuously enough to allow them to remain in short-term memory, or that are not repeated enough to pass into long-term memory, are forgotten.
To use the bits of information in long-term memory, they have to be brought back into working memory so that they can be retrieved.
Most of the time, this type of information processing occurs without any explicit conscious effort on our part. It’s only when information is excessively complex or foreign to our usual experiences that we have to make an effort to…memorize bits of information. Because these processes are so automatic, market research participants may not easily tap into their often unconscious thoughts and emotions.
Key points to remember
- Cognitive theory is a way of conducting market research that provides a better understanding of consumer thinking.
- Using techniques such as focus groups and open-ended questions, consumers share their experiences in the first person.
- By having an idea of what drives buyers to purchase, marketers can create ads and products that better meet consumers’ real needs.
- Many people are unaware of their unconscious motivations.
An extension of cognitive research: neuromarketing
Neuromarketing, as a method inherited from the meeting of several disciplines, has been developing and expanding in several fields worldwide since the early 2000s. A scientific market and a commercial market, in constant interaction, are emerging.
By markets, we mean sets of interactions, most often commercial, involving the exchange of techniques and strategies between the various players in neuromarketing.
Neuromarketing is developing as a special branch of neuroscience and cognitive science. Some researchers are looking more closely at the behavior, reactions and emotions of people as consumers, in what is known as decision science. For example, a researcher in cognitive neuroscience and social sciences such as may choose to specialize in the decision theory and the neural basis of consumption.
There are currently ninety private laboratories neuroscientists who have contracts with industrial groups to conduct studies on consumer behaviour, not to mention all the university research centers sponsored by companies. Most of these centers are based in in the United States and Europe. The specialization of researchers in this field has helped give neuromarketing its scientific credentials.